Sinful Dominion
by GoWithTheFlo20
Summary: Horatia Potter had survived war, defeated Tom and greeted death like an old friend. However, nothing is as it seems. People wear many faces, truths are taken for granted and one name can change an entire story. How will she survive political intrigue, assassinations and the decadence of sin? Well, one truth remains. Only a Borgia can love a Borgia. Cesare/Fem!Harry/Juan. Incest.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary:** Horatia Potter had survived war, defeated Tom and greeted death like an old friend. However, nothing is as it seems. People wear many faces, truths are taken for granted and one name can change an entire story. How will she survive political intrigue, assassinations and the decadence of sin? Well, one truth remains. Only a Borgia can love a Borgia. Cesare/Fem!Harry/Juan. Incest.

* * *

 **WARNINGS: This fic will contain explicit language, blood and gore, theology and religious metaphors, philosophical undercurrents, war, intrigue, political machination, nepotism and, of course, as the summary says, INCEST (More leaning towards the psychological application, ramifications and more importantly, the condition known as GSA (Genetic Sexual Attraction) rather than just incest for incest sake). If none of these things are your cup of tea, turn back now. If, like me, you don't mind exploring the more taboo aspects of the human condition, buckle up kid! We are in for a hell of a ride!**

 **Setting: Pre-season one of The Borgia's and right at the very end of the Harry Potter book series. Some manipulation to the ages, heavy distortions to the Harry Potter plot (evidently).**

* * *

Subiaco, Italy, April 1477.

Vannozza Dei Cattanei P.O.V

The sharp, piercing cry of the infant was the most blissful sound Vannozza could possibly hear. Three months into confinement, seven and a half hours in labour, and here she was, sweaty, exhausted, sprawled upon her birthing bed with midwives scuttling around her like ants, Rodrigo Borgia perched at her side, and she had never heard, nor would hear, such a pleasant sound. Before she could fully catch her breath from her last round of pushing, the babe, swaddled in thick, happily embroidered linen, was presented to her, delicately being placed upon her heaving breast.

"A girl, my lady."

A girl… A little girl. Tears came to her then, cresting upon her eye lashes as her arms came up to cradle the girl, as her fingers stroked blood streaked skin. She was a hearty little thing, plump and round and bellowing her lungs out. She was cherubic, even now, with her features, so fresh and new, scrunched in her discomforted cries, little wisps of blonde hair sprouting from her scalp like plumage of a proud bird.

"Lucrezia…"

Yes, her precious girl, the adorning jewel to her two sons' golden chain. As if looking for confirmation, or perhaps to see pride reflected from her own eyes, Vannozza turned to glance at Rodrigo, who was smiling ear from ear as he peered over to their youngest addition.

"Lucrezia Borgia, a fine name for a finer babe."

Soon her sight was pulled back to her new child, sticking, as the world moved around her, unobstructed from the beauty right before her eyes. Perhaps the world was blind if it had not stopped as she had, so utterly devoured by her child and her angelic visage. Sheets were taken, bowls of water refilled, and candles were lit as evening turned to midnight.

"Oh… Oh… Ow! Ow! Rodrigo!"

It was all she could get out as she lurched upwards and forward, curling, pushing her new babe towards her father, who readily took her with a worried frown, hands coming to clamp at her spasming stomach, still bloated as it was often for months after birth. For a lasting moment, she was so completely confused. Lucrezia was here, the after birth had been taken and dealt with, as was proper, and furthermore, it was hours after the birth, a new day in reality.

"My lady?"

Vannozza groaned heavily. Contractions. She was having contractions. Fast. Something hot and wet gushed between her thighs, flooding the bed, and even before the midwives, who had stayed in the room as was customary for the first two weeks of afterbirth confinement, rushed for her, there was a mighty cry from her lips and something, what felt like her own guts and entrails, slipped between her legs and onto the bed with a muted thud.

Her hands shook violently as they grappled for her birthing dress, wrapping knuckles into thin cloth pulled taunt at her bent knees, pulling and yanking it up so she could see the bed. That's when she saw it… No, not it, them. Another babe. A child… A girl. Twins. She had twins. The midwives swarmed her, blocking her view as they pushed her back onto the plush cushions lining the head of the bed, murmuring to each other as they bent and huddled around her bottom half. Blindly, Vannozza's hand searched for Rodrigo's, breath harsh in her lungs as panic seized her and she squeezed her lovers' hand as he pressed in close, Lucrezia safely nuzzled to his chest. There was only silence.

"My child, my babe, is she healthy? Why isn't she crying? Why is she silent? Tell me!"

A second, a minute, hours, a lifetime, time was inconsequential then when no answer greeted her straight away. But then Alessia, her most trusted servant, was turning around, facing her, smiling, something small, so small, bundled in a scrap of blue velvet, the only material close at hand, clutched to her chest and Vannozza's heart beat once more.

"She is well my lady! Well and wide eyed! Another girl! God has blessed thee justly my lady."

Then the bundle was in her arms and Vannozza was crying again, relieved, surprised, all and every emotion bouncing in her skull. She was smaller than her sister, delicate and thin boned, like a little crow hatchling. It was true, too, for the babe was wide-eyed, awake, searching with her impressively large eyes, so very, very green, like her father, Rodrigo's own stunningly vibrant eyes, but silent, almost sorrowfully resolute if such a thing could be attributed to a babe. Her hair, unlike her sisters, was full and lustrous, curling around tiny ears and smooth forehead. It too took opposition to her blonde sister, casting itself in inky darkness, onyx black spirals jutting every which way. The sun and the moon. Her two daughters. Day and night.

"Rodrigo… A girl, another child! A twin…"

Rodrigo didn't answer her, only placed Lucrezia back upon her breast as he slowly, almost hesitantly, slipped his hands around his other daughter, bringing her up and close to his chest so he could peer down upon the babe.

"Horatia. Horatia Borgia, for her timing is a most welcomed surprise. Hello there little one…"

His voice was soft, lilting, like a lullaby, and so very warm as he smiled down at the babe. Vannozza's gaze trailed to the shut window, eyeing the moon in the sky, the stars, and nodded. Mentally, she rolled the name around her mind, tasting it, flexing it, absorbing it. Horatia meant timekeeper. A new day, passed midnight, she had come just at the right moment to have her own birthday, despite being a twin.

The babe, Horatia, freed an arm from her velvet prison as her little fingers, small and stubby, latched onto her fathers' necklace. It was a family air loom, golden and proudly hung between sternum, medallion on the end depicting a field of gold on a shield, a rubied bull pouncing. The Borgia family crest. Horatia's strength was new and fragile and soon her arm was flopping back down, but not before she managed to smear a clot of blood across the face of the medallion. Rodrigo only laughed.

"Yes, you are definitely a Borgia, aren't you?"

For some reason, the sight of the necklace, the medallion streaked with blood, sat unwell in Vannozza's stomach, like curdled, sour milk. Yet, as Lucrezia nuzzled into her breast, as Rodrigo laughed and cuddled his daughter closer, as the moon shone down upon them, a maid rushing to find Cesare and Juan to meet their new siblings, Vannozza Cattanei had never felt such elation, such peace, such happiness.

It was only a shame that it wouldn't last.

* * *

Hogwarts Castle, England, May 1998.

Harry's P.O.V.

Horatia, or Harry as she was fondly called by friends, Potter, had never felt such peace before. It was quick, painless. There had been a flash of green light and then nothing but tranquillity. It was all gone. The hunger. The anger. The uncertainty. The betrayal. The pain. Gone. Only peace and warmth. She felt light, airy, fluid, unbound by flesh and sinew or meaning and reason. She simply was and that… That was enough.

The place she was in, this land, it was strange. Bright, so bright, and white and warm and slow, calming. She was standing at the edge of a winding path, cutting through a vast field of vines and grapes, barefoot, as she edged down the way, humming to herself. Something on the trodden path caught her eye.

Shrivelled, snivelling, rotten and foul, the decrepit stain of Voldemort's horcrux lay at her feet, bleating like a sheep, dying. There was no place for it in this land, no home and hearth and so, Harry stepped over the repugnant thing and carried on her way without a second glance backwards. None of that mattered now. Not with this eternal warm sun heating her frigid skin, finally. She had always felt so cold. Ice. No more. Not here. Her humming picked up in volume as her hand skittered out to brush fingertip against vines as she leisurely made her way.

She had somewhere to be. She didn't know how she knew that, she didn't know how she knew a lot of things, but know she did. There was a marbled house, a villa, at the end of this path. She knew that Villa. She knew the hallways. The kitchen. Each and every room. She knew which steps creaked on the grand staircase, which sconces were wobbly, which bookshelves were good to hide things behind. She knew it like she knew her own reflection. Instinctually. In that house, there were people there, waiting for her. They had been waiting a long time.

Just as she knew it would be, it was there, at the bottom of the path, just around an arching bend and Harry made her way to the kitchen door. As she stepped up the stone steps to the large wooden door, her dress caught her eye. It was a plain thing, linen, white and thin, nothing but a long shift, really. However, the blood on it, blossoming out from her stomach, like ink dropped in water, the stark red, did faulter her stride. Her head cocked to the side as her hand stalled on the door. There was no pain, no fear, no thundering heart. Nothing but warm sun, peace, and blood. There was no time for hesitancy. People were waiting for her.

Harry Potter pushed open the door and strode into the large villa.

* * *

Subiaco, Italy, August 1477.

Vannozza Dei Cattanei P.O.V

Her daughters really did prove to be opposites in all but blood, even at only four months old. Lucrezia proved to be a tiring baby, needing reassurance and skin contact at all hours of the day, and in full honesty, at night too. Horatia disliked being held, at all, apart from feeding. She would bawl and cry and scream until Vannozza or Rodrigo subsided and placed her back down. The only time she liked to be held close was when she was placed next to her twin to sleep in their crib, and Vannozza was only sure she allowed that because Lucrezia would wiggle and slide her way over until she felt her twin close to her side.

Lucrezia liked golden things, trinkets that sparkled and glowed, threads of silver and jewellery to fiddle with. Horatia preferred wooden things, cushions and clothes she could take apart and pull thread or stuffing from. If Horatia could get her hands on something, and if that thing just so happened to be able to be taken apart, she would dismantle it. Lucrezia was content to be held, to sleep in an embrace and nothing more, Horatia was too inquisitive for her own good, always looking, always watching. Lucrezia had come to the stage of infancy where she had taken to babbling, crowing, chirping at everything and anything that she could. Horatia, however, stayed resolutely silent. Almost eerily so. Even her cries were given from clenched gums, more puffing of flushed cheeks than wind from lungs.

Yes, so very different, day and night, sun and moon, but they were extremely close, her girls. When Lucrezia found a rather large pearl she was fond of grabbing, she would only relinquish it to her twin. When Horatia pulled a rather shiny string of golden thread from Vannozza's favoured chair, to Lucrezia it would go. While Lucrezia slept, Horatia would be wide awake, looking, almost as if she was standing guard. When it was Horatia sleeping, Lucrezia would curl herself around her smaller sister, nearly rolling on top, almost protectively. And the Lord almighty knew that Lucrezia made enough noise for the both of them. Vannozza wouldn't change either of them for the world.

"Cesare, please be careful with that."

However, she would rather like a peaceful day. Just one. Where nothing was dismantled, no jewellery stolen to be gummed upon, no fights between young boys or vases broke. Just one day. That was all she was asking for. At her reprimanding tone, echoing out from over by the stove of the kitchens, Cesare, at only seven years old, sullenly placed the vase back upon the kitchen table.

"Yes, mother."

Vannozza had been trying to cook breakfast for the last hour now, and although she had servants to do such menial tasks, she thought the effort would be well spent in having some time together with her family. Yet, the children were proving to be a handful. If Cesare wasn't trying to grab onto something he shouldn't be, six-year-old Juan was trying to climb the window or counters and if he wasn't doing so, Lucrezia was crying and if not, Horatia was tearing into a spoon or table cloth. Rodrigo, who was sat at the head of the table, lost in his letters and scrolls, thoroughly distracted, wasn't proving to be much help either. It seemed a cardinal's work was never done.

" _Yes, mother. No, mother."_

Juan snickered in an entirely too high-pitched voice, which earned him a rather fierce scowl from his older brother. Vannozza sighed as she stirred the pot, glancing to her side to see the twins settled in a crib. Lucrezia's face was turning red, her lip wobbling, seconds from crying and Horatia was currently trying to pull a wooden bar of the crib free to make her grand escape. Vannozza dropped the spoon and wiped her hands on the apron as she strolled over, speaking over her shoulder to a laughing Juan who was now sitting on the window sill.

"Juan, what have I told you? Get down from there and be nice. Please, boys, behave. Your sisters are causing me enough trouble."

Just as the first ear splitting cry left Lucrezia's lips, Vannozza had her up and in her arms, balanced on her hip as she began to sway side to side, hushing and cooing her to silence, which the babe quickly fell to now that she had her desired attention and affection, only punctuated by the odd sniffle here and there. A kiss on her cheek snapped her out of her half-tired daze as she glanced up, spotting Rodrigo smiling at her as he cut across the kitchen, to the stove, to take up the task she had been taken from.

"Do you need any help mother?"

Her eyes fell to the floor in front of her, seeing Cesare's dark eyes glistening up, hands clasped in front of him, awaiting any form of command or request. She smiled then, reaching out to ruffle his tight curls, pulling him over to her as she looked back at Rodrigo and then down to Lucrezia on her hip. Her boys. Her girls. Her family. She would take all the restless nights, all the broken spoons and torn cushions, all the picked apart jewellery and broken vases if it meant having her family, here, together, like this.

"No, dear one. Why don't you-"

She never got to finish her sentence as the oddest sound rang out like a church bell calling for morn mass. For a moment, she was confused to exactly what it was. Rodrigo was cooking. Cesare was standing before her. Lucrezia was dozing on her hip. And then it clicked. Laughter. A baby's laughter. High and keen and so unconditionally and purely joyful. Her eyes snapped to the crib only to find the bed empty.

Nonetheless, the laughter carried on and the sound led her to the culprit. Juan was standing by the window, holding tiny, little Horatia in his own small arms, the morning sun bathing them in a blanket of cheery yellow, as he pointed out the pane of glass to one thing or another, before turning to face the attentive babe once more and proceeded to pull faces, crossing his eyes in the middle. In return, Horatia's legs kicked and swung as her laughter picked up, bouncing off the pale walls, more cheerful and warm than any sunbeams. Soon, the giggling bled into babbling, loud and bubbly, the first Vannozza had ever heard come from Horatia, as Juan nodded as if he could understand every word.

"He does that all the time. He sneaks into the twins chambers every night to play with her, even when it's my turn."

 _Even when it's my turn._ Her boys had been sneaking into the nursery, playing with the twins, getting Horatia to babble and laugh, even when Rodrigo and she couldn't, holding her, and Vannozza had not been any the wiser. She didn't know whether to be disappointed in herself, or happy that her sons had taken such an active role in trying to engage the normally silent and reclusive babe. Slowly, Juan, realising he was being watched, almost protectively pulled the child closer to his chest, wrapping his arms around her.

"She gets lonely."

Was Juan's only offer of explanation. Vannoza laughed as Horatia answered in an almost affirmative babble of spit, ending in another little bell-like giggle. Cesare dashed over to the pair.

"Let me hold her!"

Vannozza only smiled as Juan took a step back and shook his head, golden brown hair fluttering around his shoulders. Cesare huffed and almost stomped his foot. Rodrigo intervened before the boys could really begin to argue, as they were prone to do.

"Boys, she is not a toy to fight over. Juan can hold and play with her until after breakfast, then, if she is not sleeping, you can, Cesare. Now come, eat, while the food is still hot."

Steadily, the boys and in turn, Horatia, made it to the table. Seeing her family together, like this, warmed her heart more than words could verbalize. It was these memories she would treasure in the years to come, but also dread, for the pain they would inflict upon her very soul.

* * *

Hogwarts Castle, England, May 1998.

Harry's P.O.V.

Harry stepped into the kitchen and took a steady sweep of the room. Familiarity greeted her with open arms. There was the window she remembered looking out of, the phantom feeling of arms wrapping around her, the flash of a golden-brown lock. There was the cracked floor tile, three from the furthest wall. There was the slightly wonky kitchen table, sometimes used to dine on even though there was a dining room down the hall and to the left. There was the vase, bright blue and gracefully elongated. There was the cooking pot over a large fire, the stove, hot, the smell of meat and bread, fresh, tickling her nostrils.

A woman was standing in front of it, blue and black dress shiny, silken, old fashioned, very old, and irrevocably beautiful with its golden embroidery of swans and peacocks. She turned towards Harry, hands being brushed off by a small scrap of fabric that she discarded on the table. Her eyes landed right on Harry and the smile that took up home on her face would have put any star to shame as she swept over, long, puffed skirts skimming tile, and encased her in a warm embrace. Harry returned it immediately, nestling into the crux of her neck, snuggling into the curtain of her rose scented hair.

Harry knew this woman. She knew the slope of her nose. She knew the tight curls. She knew the small hands and thin waist and small stature. She knew the sound of her voice and the beat of her heart and the dark eyes and decadently auburn hair impeccably pinned away from her face with pearled clips. The hug, the embrace… It felt like coming home.

The woman pulled back, just a fraction, but Harry didn't let go. She didn't think she could even if she had wanted to. She wanted that feeling, that echo of home, to be forever with her. She wanted it imprinted on her heart, written on her flesh, scoured into her bones, seared into her soul. The woman's palms, gentle, soft, slightly shaking, came up to her face, cradling her cheeks, fingers pushing away curls from her eyes as her smile wilted at the corner and little drops of salty tears began to flush against her waterline.

"Look at how much you've grown… My precious baby…"

Harry found herself speaking back without meaning to, words bypassing her brain to slip right out of tooth, tongue and lip.

"Sorry I'm late mother."

Mother? Mother? Wasn't Lily?... No. Mother. Yes. Mother. She remembered now. This woman was her mother. Harry knew that. She knew this woman… Vannozza. Yes. That was her name. She knew Vannozza as deeply as she knew herself. Harry simply didn't know how she knew all that. Before she could ponder any further, Vannozza had a hand around her back, leading her through the kitchen, out of the doors, into the winding hallways.

She knew this house, these people, knew who would be waiting for her in the dining room, but everything felt a little foggy, a bit misted, just a shade of distortion. Like an old forgotten nursery rhyme, she couldn't quite remember the words, but she knew the song, the beat.

"It's about time. Everybody has been waiting for you."

They came to a pottering stop, and as if to emphasise her point, Vannozza detached herself from Harry and opened the oaken double doors besides them, once again, pushing the both of them through. Five expected faces met her head on. Oddly enough, she knew every single one.

She knew the man dressed in black, leaning against the large fireplace, leather trousers and jerkin glittering from the orange light. She knew his black hair, as dark and boisterous as her own, his hazel eyes, thin, straight nose, arching brow, tanned skin and sardonic smile. Cesare. She remembered him slipping her extra honey, her favourite, each morning. She remembered him reading to her, valiant tales of knights and destined loves. She remembered him humming the very same song she had been humming to her as she was rocked to sleep.

She knew the man in the red Jerkin, golden brown hair tussled, dancing at his shoulders, boot clad feet perched up onto the grand dining table as he reclined in his seat. She knew his stubbled cheek and lip. She knew his bright, blue eyes. She knew his laughter and smell and warm hug. Juan. She remembered laughing as he pulled faces at her. She remembered, dusted in moonlight, as he picked her up from a bed, smiling broadly, and tickled her. She remembered the games and stories and merriment.

She knew the woman by the bookshelf, gold and white dress almost blinding in the firelight. She knew the pale blonde hair, soft features, twinkling pale blue eyes. She knew the dimpled grin, the alabaster skin, the crinkle in her nose when she laughed or was disgruntled, because Harry shared the same traits. Lucrezia. She remembered the shiny ball… No, pearl, yes, a pearl. She remembered the cooing and babbling. She remembered curling up beside her. She remembered it all.

She knew the little boy sitting by Juan, his straight hair, very much the same colour as who he was sitting by, the pixie nose, the shy gaze and smile. She had no memories of him, but she knew him. Joffre. She knew the man sitting at the head of the table. She knew those red robes, that lopsided smile, the single raised brow. She knew those eyes, emerald green, keen and cunning and sharper than any knife or blade, eyes exactly like hers. Rodrigo… Father.

Cesare, Juan, her older brothers. Lucrezia, her twin. Joffre, her younger brother. Her siblings. Vannozza, her mother, Rodrigo, her father, their parents. _Her family._ Harry laughed almost hysterically as she grinned, earning blazing smiles in return. _Home_. She had come home. Rodrigo was in front of her before she could blink, plucking up her hands, putting something cool and large into her palm, but he didn't pull away to allow her to see exactly what it was.

"It's time to come home Horatia. Come home. Everybody's waiting."

Harry frowned, laughter dying in her throat.

"Home? But I am home. I'm here."

One of his hands came away from her own, coming to a soft rest upon her cheek.

"Not quite yet. Finish it and come home."

Everything was getting heavier as confusion began to thrum through her veins. He pulled away just as her vision began to blur.

"Finish what? I am home… I am…"

Harry glanced down at her clenched hand and unfurled her fingers. There, dangling from her fingers, was a golden chain, links thick and polished, medallion encircling her palm. A rearing red bull, carved from rubies, glistened up at her, a smear of blood dancing across its face.

 _Borgia._

She remembered now. The other place, the living world, where there was pain, there was doubt, there was betrayal and hurt and horrid indecision. Her thumb delicately ran over the medallion, following the trail of blood, fingers clenching over it once more as she breathed out a single word.

"Voldemort."

The world around her cracked like a shattered mirror and she was hurtling somewhere downwards, away from the brightness and peace, the warmth and family, spiralling. Suddenly, she was breathing once more, alive again, back at Hogwarts, everything hurting, everything painful, everything cold. In her hand, chain wrapped around her wrist, was the family medallion.

 _Finish it._

* * *

Subiaco, Italy, April 1478.

Vannozza Dei Cattanei P.O.V

Vannozza gently lowered Lucrezia into her crib, pushed up alongside her own personal bed, the babe finally silent, but still rosy cheeked. The young one was ill, chesty with a runny nose and for the first four days of this sudden illness, Vannozza had been so utterly worried, so consumed by it, that it was all she could really focus on. She moved Lucrezia into her own chambers, away from Horatia should she contract the same illness, kept a watchful and diligent eye, and sent as many prayers up to God as she could.

Rodrigo was at the Vatican, working, unable to get away from the intrigue and demands of being a cardinal, though he sent her letters taken by messenger each day, waiting for any word from her, either relieved or mournful. From his latest missive, he should be home in the morn and Vannozza would finally find some comfort in his reassuring presence. Juan and Cesare, who should be asleep, were likely still in the nursery, playing with Horatia.

She really couldn't keep those three apart, not now that Horatia had begun to interact, and she was hesitant to dampen any bonding time the three shared, as the babe normally slept through the day where Lucrezia soaked up her brother's attention. However, now that Lucrezia had fallen asleep, it was time for Vannozza to try and catch a few hours herself and leaving the two brothers and Horatia to the care of the servants didn't seem so shameful that night.

Nonetheless, something nipped at her mind, like a small mongrel, growling for attention, frothing at the mouth, and suddenly, sleep was the last thing on her mind. Perhaps it was the utter silence of the villa, perhaps it was just a feeling of her maternal instincts on full drive from the lack of sleep and the uncommon windy night roiling around their house, but something just felt bone chillingly wrong in that moment as she pulled away from the crib.

Making her way out of her private chambers, knowing the nursery was just down the hall, Vannozza leant on the balcony railing as she peered down the darkened hallway. The maids must have forgotten to light the candles. That wasn't like Alessia at all…

"Cesare? Juan? Answer me? Cesare?"

Only the flickering of shadows from the undrawn drapes, allowing pallid moonlight to filter in, answered her and her heart pounded as she edged down the hallway, towards the nursery. The curtains should have been closed hours ago. Where was everybody? She could feel her heart in her ribcage, pounding against her lungs, seizing her ear to play a heady beat of drums to the sound of her tapping steps. Something was wrong. She knew it. She could feel it.

When she got to the door to the nursery, she felt bile rise in her throat as the door was cracked open but no light apart from the light of the silver moon slithered out. No laughter. No babbling. Not even an argument. Nothing but silence. Swallowing down the urge to be violently sick, Vannoza pushed the door open further.

"Cesare, Juan, now is not the time for games!"

However, as the door opened, and she could peer through the darkened room, Her heart stopped completely, and the bile turned to ash on her tongue. Cesare and Juan were on the floor next to each other, crumpled, still, lifeless. Vannozza dashed over and fell to her knees, wrestling her prone little boys onto her lap, frantic but ever so relieved when she felt their chests level inhale and exhale.

"They are only sleeping."

Her eyes darted up to the figure in the corner at the sound of the foreign voice, her grip tightening on her boys, and found a man standing by Horatia's crib. He was a tall man, old, dressed in merry blue and pink robes that glided along the plush rug. His hair was white, with the odd strand of ginger hair here and there, with an equally long and impressive beard to match, his eyes a twinkling sky blue. Upon his head, so high it nearly touched the ceiling, was a pointed hat, midnight blue, with little golden stars stitched upon the velvet material, and across his nose was the oddest metal frames Vannozza had ever seen, filled with shiny circles of glass. Worst of all, he was holding her baby, her Horatia.

"What are you doing with my baby?"

He glanced down at the child and bounced her a little as she began to grumble.

"I truly am sorry, but this needs to be done."

Slowly, so fearful that any fast movements on her part would invoke the man to action, Vannozza laid the boys heads back onto the floor and stood up, holding her arms out, pleadingly, fingers splayed.

"Please… Give her back to me. I'll give you anything you want! Gold, jewels, food, horses, anything. Name it sir and it will be yours! Just leave my family be."

He shook his head.

"I can't. Not yet. She has a role to fulfil. A destiny. This is for the greater good."

Vannozza took one step forward but stopped. Something was off about this man. Something felt wrong. Inhuman. But that was her child, her little Horatia, no gut instinct could override a mother's love.

"Please, I beg you, leave my child be."

He locked eyes with her then and for a moment, Vannozza could see, truly see, that he really did not want to do this, whatever _this_ was, and that he really was sorry. Seeing her chance, perhaps her only one, she pressed on.

"Please, kill me instead! Just not my children!"

Whatever it was that had been holding him back snapped as he straightened out, pulling free a long, knobbly stick, aiming the tip at her. Vannozza, knowing a threat when she saw one, despite the oddity of the weapon, went to open her mouth. To scream. To call for help. For anything. She didn't have a chance.

"One day, your daughter will be back. I swear to you thusly."

Then there was a flash of cold light and Vannozza knew no more. When Rodrigo came home that morn, there was only his wife and three children, Lucrezia sleeping peacefully and the rest knocked unconscious. No sign or hair of a break in, no foot prints, nothing… Horatia was simply gone. So was the family necklace.

* * *

Hogwarts Castle, England, May 1998.

Harry's P.O.V.

With a shout of Expelliarmus, Tom Riddle was gone from the world in a flutter and scream of rage. Mayhem, bedlam, absolute anarchy broke out as deatheaters either ran or tried to fight to the bitter end, even if they were outnumbered three to one now. People were falling, rushing, bodies clashing against bodies, the sky lighting up with a tirade of colours from the spells being shot. As she fired a stupefy at Antonin Dolohov, another deatheater, or somebody, there was too much movement to keep track, slammed into her. For a moment, they swayed, almost dancing, as a twisting, gnawing pain flared from her stomach. Then they were pushing away, darting off, nothing but a shadow as they slipped back into the crowd.

Harry doubled over, hand jolting to her stomach, pressing, as the world slipped off its axis. Wearily, almost in a trance, she glanced down and pulled her hand away. Blinding crimson was splashed across her hand, soaking into her shirt, coating the medallion she was still clutching. Stabbed… She had been stabbed… What kind of witch or wizard stabbed someone?

She heard Hermione, far away, or right next to her, it was hard to tell, screaming her name as her knees buckled underneath her. Her stomach rolled, her hand, the medallion, burned as if it had been heated over a hot flame, and then, just as Hermione was about to reach her, fingers just a hairsbreadth away from her shoulder, before she fell to the floor, there was a burst of white light.

Her kneecaps met soft grass. The grey skies turned blue and bright and the air around her was pleasantly warm as the world swam in and out of focus. Blearily, clutching at her stomach once more, Harry looked around. A trodden path. A vineyard grove. It was her dream…

Feeling half possessed, Harry glanced down at her stomach, the blood stain seeping in the exact spot the dream her had been bleeding, before she hobbled to her feet, hissing harshly as her wound flared in pain as she dragged herself down the path. The house… She needed to find the house…

* * *

Subiaco, Italy, April 1492.

Vannozza Dei Cattanei's P.O.V

"What was she like mother?"

Vannozza pulled away from staring into fire she was sitting beside to look over from her seat to her youngest child, Joffre. She smiled as best as she could, especially on a day such as today, as she closed the little book she had been pretending to read, just to give her a look of not being fully lost in mind and memory to any who observed her, and placed it on the arm as she stood up, taking her son by the shoulder to lead him into the dining room, ready for supper.

It had been exactly fifteen years since Horatia had been abducted, with no sign of what happened to her to be found, no matter how hard or diligently either she or Rodrigo searched. And search they had. They sent letters to every lord, every city, to any ear that would listen. No one knew or had ever met a man as such as she had described. She also knew what they said of her, the rumours, the vile whispers. She was mad. A man with a stick? Inconceivable. She was lying. She had killed her own babe after nights of no sleep. Flushed her down a well. But she knew. She knew the truth. _She remembered._

Even after all these years, she would never forget that old man's face, no matter if the doctors or people around her said she conjured the memory up. The boys didn't remember that night, but her family believed her, and that was all that mattered.

Today would have been her sixteenth birthday, Lucrezia's having passed just yesterday, and as such, today had always been a hard day for Vannozza. Today was the day to remember, as painful as it was to. The rest of the year they could pretend there wasn't an extra seat at the table, that there were an extra set of chambers, that there were always extra gifts stored away each year from Christmas, collecting dust in a closet. They, Rodrigo and Vannozza, had never given up hope that one day, just one, Horatia would be found.

It was a hard day on everyone apart from Joffre, who could not remember his sister, though, they all mourned in their own, distinctive ways. Her cheerful sunbeam Lucrezia became sullen, quiet, almost tranquil as she spent most of the day looking to the sky, alone. Juan, since reaching teenagerhood, left the house from sunrise to midnight, doing god knows what, although he always looked ill-tempered when he came home and headed straight to his own chambers. Cesare, her oldest, hovered around her, always looking to ease her on this day, offering all and any aid from sorting laundry to cleaning the pantry. Rodrigo, in misplaced guilt for not being there, at home that day, would take time from work and stay close, watchful, not even doing his scrolls or letters.

He would sit by her, hold her hand for hours and simply be. Losing a child, that sort of pain… There was nothing in the world that could compare to it. _Nothing_. Subconsciously, her hand tightened on Joffre's shoulder.

"She loved to giggle."

Joffre grinned up at her.

"Do you think she would have liked me?"

Vannozza bit back the tears and the lump forming in her throat. Oh, what she wouldn't give to know what Horatia would like or dislike. Would she have been delicate, like Lucrezia and Joffre, or boisterous, like her boys? Would she have been brash and opinionated, like Juan, or mild but stern like Cesare? Would she have loved the arts, like Lucrezia, or games like Joffre? It hurt too much to think of and so, Vannoza bent down and looked Joffre square in the eyes.

"She would have adored you. Do not ever doubt that."

If only she had have taken Horatia into her room with Lucrezia. If she hadn't of separated them… Vannozza had to change the topic because she could not take anymore. Not today, on this day. Remembering her, her precious baby, was one thing, but to vocalize it, to birth the loss into reality by words was too much. Far too much. It made it all the more real, all the more tangible and in truth, it felt too real and sore as it was to pour salt into the wound. Time, it seemed, didn't heal all wounds.

"I heard the cooks have whipped up some fresh berries and gelato for dessert…"

The distraction worked as Joffre picked up speed to the dining room.

"Gelato! I love Gelato!"

Vannozza trailed after her son as he took off, questioning, in the back of her mind, if Horatia would have loved Gelato too.

* * *

Subiaco, Italy, April 1492.

Harry's P.O.V

Harry tumbled through the kitchens heavy set doors with shaking limbs and haggard breath. Dizzy. So dizzy. She couldn't focus correctly. Everything was fading in and out, blurring together into one undiscernible mass. Nonetheless, that drive was still in her chest, that possessed sort of want, that unignorable need. The dining room. She had to make it to the dining room.

The blood was coming quickly now, saturating the waistband of her jeans, dribbling down her left thigh. Still, she carried on. Step by step, she lurched closer to the set of doors that dream her had taken before… Was it dream? Someone had been with her, hadn't there? A woman? Mother… Remember… She had to remember and, more importantly, she needed to keep going. She made it to the doors as a disembodied voice piped up behind her.

"What are you doing? You can't go into the house you vagabond! Excuse me? Hello?"

Harry ignored the woman in the long plain dress, flour dusting her apron as she pushed on and slinked through the doorway. The woman came after her, along with two strangely dressed men, but everything was whirling, her mind racing, her heart thundering and the only thing that mattered, in that moment, was to get to the dining room. Her wand flicked out, the one holding the medallion still pressing into her stomach, and the people dropped to the floor, unconscious.

The expenditure of magic cost Harry dearly as she skidded into the hallway wall, bashing her shoulder against brick as her sight flickered to black for a heart rendering second. Using her free hand, white knuckled around her wand, she pressed it against the wall and tried to push herself upright, but her limbs would not comply. No. She couldn't give up. The room… Family… Room.

Inchingly, she balanced herself against the wall and braced herself for the pain as she stumbled forward, pressing her shoulder against brick to keep herself upright. Behind her was left a stark trail of blood, glistening on the off-white stone, punctuated by a bloody handprint. Finally, when she thought she could walk no more, she fell against an oaken door, breath jarring and coming in sporadic barbed shards, the taste of copper languishing on her tongue.

With the last bit of her strength, she pushed open the door as far as she could and fell into the room, barely managing to stay on her feet. Inside was the same table, the same fireplace, the same dinner left steaming on the table, although, this time everyone was seated. She could almost laugh. Her steps clanked on the floorboards, her left foot creaking as her leg went numb and immobile, and one by one, starting from the youngest, little Joffre, they turned to face her, eyes growing wide, mouths slack.

Harry pitched into the table, hip striking the corner, as her hands slammed into the mahogany to hold herself up. The medallion dropped to the polished table face with a clang as her fingers loosened, her wand falling to the plush rug at her feet as her eyes began to flutter. With one last word, she fell.

"Home…"

* * *

Vannozza Dei Cattanei's P.O.V

The door creaked open and Vannozza thought nothing of it, just a maid or servant going about their business, bringing in wine or bread for the evening meal. However, the ringing of the steps didn't sound right, one was dragging, the other stomping, as if the person was limping and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Joffre, who was sitting next to her, closest to the door, turn to look at the intruder. She saw his face grow pale, eyes wide and Vannozza followed his gaze and then the world stopped.

A young girl, sixteen at the most, short and elegantly dainty, was dragging her self forward and towards them, half hidden by the falling sun. Her hair, an onyx mass of curls that threatened to swallow her form entirely, fluttering at her waist, twigs, leaves and dirt trapped in its coils, hid most of her face. Her skin was stricken with streaks of ash and dried blood, almost black on her pale skin, darkened even further by the shadows she was currently moving through. Her clothes, odd things of unknown material, were bloodstained, torn and ash covered too. At her stomach, where a bloody hand was pressing in tightly, Vannozza spotted what made Joffre's face bleach to startling white. The bottom of her top covering was doused in blood, leaking down her legs in steady streams. She had been _stabbed._

But then, before Vannozza could fully digest just the shock of that, the girl was falling into the table, barely hanging on with one hand as she fought to stay upright, her face came out of the shadows and into the fireplaces ambient light and Vannozza's world crumpled in on itself. She swore, by the mother and the son and the holy spirit, she heard a baby's giggle.

That was Cesare's black hair, uncontrollable and alive. That was Rodrigo's eyes, so green and bright and vivaciously burning. That was Lucrezia's porcelain skin, alabaster on marble. That was Juan's sharp cheekbones and cupid bowed lips. That was Joffre's upturned, button nose. That was her jaw and high-arching brows. The girl fell back, something dropping from her hand onto the table and the silver and gold shined in the firelight.

The Borgia crest, soaked in blood and jewels, shimmered merrily in the orange light tauntingly. The family necklace… The one lost when Horatia… Brought back…

" _One day, your daughter will be back. I swear to you thusly."_

"Home…"

The girl croaked out and it was an odd noise, deep and resonate like Cesare's, but lilting and playfully like Lucrezia's with the smooth pronunciation of Juan and then she was falling, and Vannozza could not think straight as she lept from her chair, grabbing her just before she hit the floor, tugging her closer, watching as her eyes rolled to the back of her skull with one last smile on her lips.

"Horatia? Horatia!"

She could hear movement from behind her, but couldn't force herself to look away, not again, afraid if she did the visage in front of her would fall to dust. So she held on, even when Rodrigo began shouting.

"Cesare find a doctor! Lucrezia, get some towels and warmed wine! Juan, help me carry her to a bed…"

* * *

 **So, what do we think? Would we like more, or should I burn this and never look back? XD**

 **Pronunciation guide:**

 **Horatia:** Ho-rey-siy-aa

 **Cesare:** Cha-se-rey

 **Juan:** Who-ahn/ Wan

 **Lucrezia:** Loo-kret-seeya

 **Vannozza:** Van-noh-zah


	2. Chapter 2

**Horatia's P.O.V**

It was different this time, there was no vineyard, no grand villa or white sun. In fact, there was hardly anything, just a lack, a disappointing remission of senses. No smell, no taste, no feel, just muted grey vapour. She was in between now, caught, not here, in the land of pain and fear, the real world, but neither fully there, in the clutches of peace and undying sunshine, the unnameable land of serenity. It felt like she was treading water, frozen in a moment of falling, foot still on the floor but balance shifting, seconds from jumping but just not quite there.

 _She wasn't alone._

In the endless fields of grey, no horizon, no sky or floor, just infinite grey, Albus Dumbledore was standing next to her, facing out into the vast nothingness with her. She didn't turn her head to face him, she didn't feel the need to, as she spoke to the fog.

"You took me from them."

It wasn't a question. There was no hesitation, no doubt. She may not have the quick, almost infallible memory of Hermione, nor did she have the pull of the gut instinct like Ron, but she had her own sort of wit. She _knew_ people. She knew how they thought, how they would act. She _knew_ Albus. She knew what she had saw, what she had witnessed. It wasn't hard to put the pieces together. The truth, however, still wounded.

 _She wasn't, and never had been, a Potter._

"I did what I thought I must do given the dire circumstances the wizarding world found itself in."

She only needed to know one thing.

"Why?"

There was no falling silence, no moment of misgiving or reluctance, as Albus answered her straight away.

"The real Horatia Potter died the night Voldemort attacked of fever. I used the time turner I would later gift your friend, Miss Granger, to try and right it, but nothing I did worked. No matter what, Horatia died. So I traced the bloodline. No relative, as far back as his line started, would not be missed from James Potter's lineage. However, Lily's line proved to be diverse. I was surprised to find a few wizards in her ancestry, though, none of those gentlemen would work, as it had already been recorded that her and James Potter's child was a girl. But then I found _her,_ a witch, just one. A distant ancestral cousin. _You._ I went back, I took you, and I placed you in the crib that night to face your destiny. I always hoped you would find your way back to your home. I am glad you succeeded."

Horatia sighed.

"It wasn't my destiny, though, was it? You _made_ it my destiny. You needed someone to fill in the role, to be your pawn, to play _your_ game. I'm _glad_ you succeeded."

She couldn't stop the venom from dripping, couldn't bite back the snarl. Control. She had never had control over her own life. Never. From birth to death, to death again, her life had been mapped out for her, planned, sequestered, taken and abused. Yet… Yet, could she really fault the man standing beside her? In the face of total damnation, destruction, the loss of her people, the good in them, the rise of someone like Tom Riddle to utter supremacy and domination, would she not go to the same lengths Albus had to stop the darkness? To save all and everything she loved? Yes, she would have. She would have sold her soul to the devil, if she had to. Perhaps she and Albus weren't so different after all. The thought made her feel a bit sick, truthfully. Dumbledore echoed her, sighing.

"No, not a pawn. Hope, Horatia. I, we, the wizarding world needed hope. Hope, Harry, hope is the way to win a war. With no hope, soldiers fall, heads roll and governments crumble. You brought the hope back."

Harry's hands clenched at her side. She may understand his reasoning, even emphasize with the monumental burden he had carried on his shoulders, leading him to take the actions that he had, and perhaps, in his shoes, she would have taken the same decisions. But she hadn't been in his shoes, she could reason only as much as her own painful experiences let her and empathy fell short when the one thing, the only damned thing, she had ever wanted, _family,_ had been snatched from her for the greater good.

"And I am the only one to pay the price. You took me from my real family. Stripped me of any normal life I could have had. You plucked me from a home to-… To dye."

And that was it, wasn't it? The root of her pain? No, it wasn't death itself, she had long ago come not to fear that beast of blackened fur, but to be whittled down, carved, branded as a lamb for sacrifice, even before she could fully talk, left her feeling… Secular. Only good for one thing. Something that had outlived its purpose. Just a tool, not a human, not a person with thought or feelings of their own, not a girl, not a child or woman, but an _instrument_ for others to use. A lifeless, cold, rudimentary utensil. From the corner of her eye, she saw Dumbledore turn to face her.

"I am dearly sorry you had to live through what you have, do not ever doubt that, but I am not sorry for what I did. Without you, without someone to play the part you did, the war would have been lost. Many more than what already have, would have fallen. The wizarding world would have shrivelled and died under Tom Riddle's shadow."

That was her life, wasn't it? Always about someone else. Tom, the Dursleys, Albus, Lily, James, the greater good, but never actually about her. She was just a background character to her own life.

"I sort of hate you."

She did, she really did, but not fully. Never fully. She could never bring herself to hatred entirely. She saw what hatred had done, saw what that emotion had twisted and wrought in the form of Tom Riddle and she never, ever, wanted anything to do with it. Furthermore, if this would have never happened, if she had never been abducted from the Borgia's, her family, plunked into a time not her own, a destiny not her own, a life not her own, she would have never met Hermione, never met Ron, Luna, Neville, Remus, Sirius, dear, beloved Sirius, and even if it was but for a brief time, they had made her life worth something fighting for, living for. She would go through what she had a thousand times, each more brutal, bloodier, if only to meet those people, love those people, again.

"I'm never going to see Hermione or Ron again, am I?"

She felt Albus's gentle hand on her shoulder more than she saw the movement. Oddly, she knew, even without her, Hermione and Ron would be okay. They would hurt and cry, but they would heal, they all would and, one day, they would laugh and dance and get on with their lives. They would be happy. One day, they would think of her and it would not bring grief or sorrow for a lost friend, but joy and mirth and that… That was all she wanted her memory to bring. Stranger still, she knew her time in that place, with them, was over. Finished. That book was being closed and really, she was okay with the final chapter.

"Perhaps in the afterlife. But you have a new adventure ahead of you now, a new book to open, Horatia."

Harry wanted to be happy too, more than anything, and here was her chance, right there, the one thing she's always wanted, thirsted for, pleaded for. _Family._ It was right there, at her fingertips, ready to be taken, seized, she just needed to reach out and…Then why did her hand hesitate when she stretched out to grab it?

"The wizarding world will be fine without you Harry. They will rebuild, live on and grow. Your family, however, need you. You need them too."

Harry swallowed hard.

"I-… I'm scared."

She was. Terrified really. What if they didn't like her? What if they grew to hate her like the Dursleys? What if, being from the past, they could not accept her as she was? Damned her for her magic? Cast her out for her differences? For, she would not, and could not, lie about what and who she was. Her life had been nothing but lies, hidden and erosive, and she would not bring that onto others, or herself, again.

 _No more lies._

Worst of all, what if having the promise of family right at her fingertips, she awoke to find it all but a dream, the fantasy of the desperate, one last wish she would never get to have? She wouldn't be able to take that pain. The hand on her shoulder moved, patting her reassuringly.

"There is only one happiness in this life, Harry. To love and be loved in return. They have missed you, dearly. You too, have missed them without ever fully realizing it. Do not turn your back on a chance to heal that wound, for you or for them, even in the face of your fear."

Harry turned to face Dumbledore for, what she knew, to be the last time. She may hate him, loath his choices, but he stuck to his decisions, painted himself as the villain if it meant saving his, their, people, and while he was willing to give others lives to the greater good, he held himself to the same standard. She could respect that, deeply. He was, after all, only human.

"Tell me one last thing."

Harry croaked. Family is all she has ever wanted, and if that prize requested a leap of faith, one last dash into the unknown, then she would freefall with a smile upon her face. Either she would awaken to Tom's victorious face scowling down upon her, or she would see the family she had been denied from the very beginning. It was one or the other. A fifty-fifty chance. For Harry, in her life, those were good odds indeed.

"Is this real? Or has this all been happening inside my head?"

Dumbledore's smile was fond, otherworldly and so kind as he winked at her from over his half-rimmed glasses. She would miss him, in an awful sort of way.

"Of course it is happening inside your head Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

Then he was pushing her and she was falling.

* * *

 **Subiaco, Italy, April 1492.**

 **Juan Borgia's P.O.V**

She resembled a Grecian tableau, his sister, a woodland nymph reclining in eternal rest, Pan singing her to slumber with his flutes, as she laid still upon the large bed in a thin shift, thick sheets of linen tucked up to chest, pushed up against the open windows, morn sun kissing her pale skin with golden lips. She was a clash of colours then, after the ash, blood, grime and dust had been washed from skin and hair, rags stripped and burned in the hearth. Black so dark it seemed blue, draping over stark white pillows in lapping waves, skin so pale it was like fresh milk, dusky pink kindly coming back to hint at cheek and lip. The only colour missing from her pallet was the emerald green, though, Juan knew that colour was currently hiding behind closed lid.

The last eight hours had been a rush of frantic frenzy as a physician was hurried to her side to try and stem the bleeding and seal the wound slicing her abdomen, spilling her out like a dropped wine goblet. Juan, in honesty, couldn't recall much of those last hours. He only remembered movement, a whirl of mind and thought too fast to catch, following the physician and his fathers' orders as they called for more sheets, more heated wine, thread and all manner of things.

Yet, here they were, a lifetime of fear later, awaiting the doctor's verdict on Horatia's fate. His mother, Vannozza, had taken to pacing the length of wall, gaze flicking back and forth from limp body to window, riding a groove into the floorboards as she chewed upon thumb, fretted and sighed. His father, Rodrigo, sat in the seat closest to the large bed, chin resting on clenched hand, eyes far away, lost to thought or memory, as he fiddled with that strange stick, knobbly and thin, that Horatia had dropped.

Lucrezia stood at Cesare's side, by the door, wide-eyed and worriedly ringing her hands, bouncing from seat to window to Cesare's side in dizzying intervals, like a flightless bird caged. Cesare himself, stood still, statue-esque, his face an impressive blank slate of disciplined control. He didn't move, he didn't groan, he simply watched, unmoveable. Little Joffre had been sent away by maid and servant to his own chambers, away from the disheartening blood and limp body. And he, Juan, well, he was where he should be, sitting on the edge of the bed, as close to Horatia as he dared, staring down at the stranger who was so achingly familiar.

It was strange, so bizarre, that even after all these years, after baby fat had been shed, bones stretched and features personalised, that now he could still so very clearly see the babe he used to play with as a child himself. Would he recognize her on instinct come another fifty years? When she was wrinkled and grey? When her eyes had lost the sparkle of youth? If Cesare or Lucrezia or Joffre were the one to be abducted, should they have come back, would he have been able to recognize them as easily as he had Horatia? There were no answers to be found, just that stretch of tender awareness piercing his chest, but he didn't think so.

Oh, he loved his family, he truly did, but that barren coldness, that feeling of being an outsider, had always permeated his mind. Even from birth, Lucrezia had been the apple of his mother and fathers' eye. She would smile and ask, and they would bow and bend, no matter how jovial or menial her request was. She would always follow Cesare everywhere, hanging onto breech or skirt, listening, joyful. He loved his sister, dearly, but he was never the one she went to, the one she ran to, that role had been taken by Cesare, and perhaps that was what had caused that tiny splinter in their relationship. Mayhap in all his relationships.

 _He could never live up to Cesare._

Cesare, despite his brothers own misgivings, was his fathers' favourite, no matter how Juan taunted him at times when bitterness clogged his throat. His father had chosen him for the church, to follow in his own footsteps, to become the holy progeny. His father saw himself in Cesare, and when he looked upon Juan, he knew, just knew, Rodrigo saw something lacking, just short in reaching his father's immense shadow.

Vannozza doted on Lucrezia and Cesare, and Joffre, since his birth, was never far from mothers' skirts. In the end, it left Juan with the sour taste of simply not belonging, not needed, an interloper. But that hadn't always been the truth. There was a time once, long ago, when someone had wanted him, needed him, looked to him.

 _Horatia._

Juan was the first person she had ever let hold her without bawling her eyes out. He was the one to get her to laugh and babble and play. He was the one mother would hand Horatia over to when she needed to be quietened, soothed and calmed. Not father. Not Cesare. _Him_. No one could take that from him, claim his achievement, deny him this one truth. For once, just once, he had been chosen above someone else, and not simply because that someone was unattainable.

"How is her health?"

Vannozza asked as soon as the physician pulled away from Horatia's lifeless figure, the subtle rise and fall of her chest under bed sheet the only sign of continued life. Juan's gaze flickered to the robed physician before skittering back to Horatia, half impatient for the answer, half hesitant.

"The wound was intensive, but clean and clear. I have done all I can, rest and gods prayer will have to do what I cannot. However, the bleeding has stopped, colour is returning to her cheeks and her fever has broken. All good signs, my lady."

Vannozza stumbled to the free chair Lucrezia had vacated, sagging into it with a puff of dark crimson velvet skirts and shaking hands. Lucrezia leaned upon the wall by the window, looking up to the ceiling, almost in reverent thanks to the sky. Cesare, his normally composed brother, sighed as he seemingly danced upon the spot, unsure of his footing, whether to sit, turn around or sag. Even Juan could feel his own muscles loosen, unaware they had ever been tight and locked in the first place. Rodrigo, his father, placed elbow on knee as he leant forward, tapping that strange stick across his leg, turning it around and around and around, as he spoke.

"What more can you tell us doctor?"

The physician coughed into his fist, clearing his throat, as he delved into a tirade so cold, so detached, so clinical, that it made Juan irrationally angry, a hot poker in the lungs, a twist to his intestines. How could he speak so unemotionally as he was, when the topic was so… Intimate? It was their sister, their child, _Horatia_ , he was speaking of, not some dissected pig on a cold slab in an auditorium.

"The scar on her forehead is old, healed, inflicted upon her in early childhood, perhaps infancy I would hazard a guess. It's position, depth of the scar and paleness lead me to believe it was a killing blow she survived. She has a few other scars of interest. One on her right forearm, a bite of some kind, large with prominent fangs. I believe it to be reptilian, or more succinctly, snake. However, the most interesting scar, in my opinion, happens to be on her left hand…"

The doctor, almost too keen in his need to show his findings, scuttled over to the bedside near Rodrigo, plucking up her resting hand to hold to view, and Juan bit his tongue. His English was not the best, nor did he particularly want it to be, French had more practical uses, but he knew English when he saw it. However, still, even in the face of this, his first reaction was to deny what he could clearly see with his own eyes, even when the doctor went on to confirm what he saw.

"It is written in a form of English, the spelling a little peculiar, but there is no doubt it is English. _I must not tell lies._ A brand of some sort? Punishment? Either way, it was inflicted by an outsider and not herself, as her callouses prove she is left handed. Furthermore, I believe Horatia here has been, and likely kept, in England for these many years."

Father had no quarrels with any Englishman. Why would they take her? Why would they brand and scar and try to kill her and… Nothing made sense. Before Juan, in an act not fully thought of, could reach over and take Horatia's hand away from the doctor, away from his gleaming eyes and sharp, uncaring tongue, his mother was speaking up behind him.

"Is she… Is she… Intact?"

Once again, confusion blanketed him before the biting pinch of realisation settled over his features, constricting, thinning. There had been an hour, right after the wound had been sown shut, that he, Cesare and Rodrigo had been ushered out of the room, pushed into the hallway like errant hounds, for Lucrezia, mother and the physician could clean and re-dress Horatia. Perhaps naively, Juan had thought that was all that had taken place, not that the doctor had conducted more… Invasive examinations.

In point of fact, the possibility that Horatia, his _little_ sister, could have been taken for-… For-… for such a thing, to be used in such a base manner, defiled and raped, had never once crossed his mind, but now that the seed of that idea had been planted, he could feel it's oily, horrid buds unfurling. Thankfully, the physician came and cut that tree down before it could fully grow in its most grotesque manner.

"Perfectly intact. She has not been bedded by consent or force."

You could taste the relief in the air, sweet, light and lingering. Rodrigo sighed as he stood from his chair, clapping his hands together and rubbing palm against palm.

"That will be all doctor."

The doctor gave a severe nod, picked up his bag and put his big book of remedies underneath his arm.

"I shall be back tomorrow morn for a check up, if that pleases you Cardinal?"

Rodrigo nodded and waved his hand in dismissal as the physician gave one last bow before swinging out of the chambers. As soon as the bulky, oaken door clanked shut, Rodrigo was addressing them all.

"She is here, in relatively good health, alive. That is all that matters."

Juan turned back to Horatia, but he knew what was coming, even before the footsteps of his brother stalking closer rang out. Cesare was always planning, scheming, could never leave the puzzle alone, could never just rest, for one moment. He just couldn't help himself.

"If the English did abduct her, they could try and strike again. We need to know if-"

For being a man of the cloth, Cesare's mind was most often on war and battle. Juan, while understanding Cesare's stand point, for he too would like answers, knew when and where to take his respite, to enjoy an instant, without being concerned of tomorrow. Could they not be simply glad, for such a little time, for their sisters return without darkening it with blood and vendetta's? However, despite Cesare's impassioned reasoning, Rodrigo would not be budged on this.

"Then they will _fail._ Your sister is in no condition to be questioned, neither should she be! Look at her, truly look at her, does she look like she has had an easy life? No? She will come to us with her tale when she is ready. No sooner, no later, mayhap never."

Juan glanced over his shoulder, back at Cesare, and watched. Only Juan saw the defiant sharpening of the shoulders, the clench and release of his jaw as he fought back a retort, the flex of his fingers at his side, before he eventually sequestered to their fathers wishes and glanced down to the venetian rug. Perhaps Cesare did know when and where to pick his battles after all.

"I only wished to protect her from any further attack."

As always, his father smiled at Cesare and patted his cheek lovingly. Was Cesare correct? Could Horatia be a target to further attacks? No. Juan would not venture down that road this day. This day he would find joy in her return, not dismay. Rodrigo, for once, was in the same mind of Juan rather than Cesare. Today really was the day of oddities for the Borgia's.

"I know son, but we are Borgia, and Borgia's stick together. She needs a warm, welcoming family more than an inquisition right now, and that is exactly what we are going to give her. Aren't we?"

Lucrezia was the one to answer Rodrigo, all angelic smiles and exuberant enthusiasm.

"Of course, father."

However, what came next was pure accusation.

" _You know."_

Juan's gaze skidded to his mother, Vannozza, as too did Cesare's and Lucrezia's, as the normally calm, gentle mannered and affable woman turned dark, features shrill and livid. She jolted from her chair, a flare of force, stalking forward as Rodrigo took a precautionary step backward.

"Vannozza, my love, not here and not now."

Juan had never seen his mother this way, this twisted, this thrown to anger, as she crashed against Rodrigo, hands balled, as she wailed upon him, thumping his chest and arms, anything she could reach, with her tiny, delicate hands. Juan pushed himself up the bed, closer to Horatia, as if he could protect her unaware slumbering form should any undeserved, errant attention come their way. Lucrezia gave a short, surprised cry as she pushed herself back into the wall behind her, away from the scorching wrath of their mother. Rodrigo managed to just grasp onto Vannozza's arms, at the wrists, to stop the onslaught as Cesare dipped in, wrapping a stiff arm around their mother's waist, trying to pull her away from their flustered father, but she would not be diverged from her blistering fury.

"Not now? Not now! When? How long have you known? Where has she been Rodrigo? Where has she been!"

Juan's fist clenched into the bed sheet underneath him. Surely their father had not known? Juan, dazedly, remembered his parents searching, the letters they would send out, the sound of his mother crying behind closed doors when she thought no one could hear her. If father had of known, why would he do so? Why would he let it continue?

"Stop this foolishness! I have been as ignorant of her location as you have."

Rodrigo said but it was not enough, not nearly enough, to slice through the spinning distraught his mother had been imbibed with.

"No! I know you Rodrigo Borgia, I know you better than you know yourself, and you would not let this go so easily if you did not know already! How long have you known?"

Cesare succeeded in getting the irate Vannozza away a step or two, but no further as she wiggled and jerked herself around.

"Believe me, my love, I swear I have been as in the dark as you for all these years… Until I saw her drop this…"

Rodrigo held out the stick, the strange twig, long, with little balls and knobs jutting out from its skinny body. It reminded Juan of the tree, the one at the very edge of their vine groves in Subiaco, with little white flowers blooming. The tree he, Cesare, Lucrezia and Horatia would play below, under the watchful eye of their mother. The elder tree his father refused to cut down, even if it did strangle their grape vines within ten feet of it. At the presentation of the twig, Vannozza grew as befuddled as Juan had.

"A stick? What has a stick got to do with-… Pedro."

Vannozza stopped her struggling, her jerks and kicks and all anger, that dark cloud that blackened her face, lifted as something profound clicked into place. Rodrigo smiled at her as he lowered his hand, though most gazes in the room still drifted to the bizarre stick.

"You remember my cousin then?"

Slowly, knowing the anger had washed away, Cesare released their mother from his lenient grip. Gradually, Vannozza made her way over to Rodrigo, lifted her own hand, as if to grab the stick, before the limb fell back down with a swing, unsure whether she wanted to follow through with the action or not.

"It seems almost impossible to forget a man such as he… Do you think she is _like_ him?"

Rodrigo shrugged.

"How could I not? She comes baring the same wan-… _This_. It cannot be a coincidence."

Juan frowned as he mentally tried to recall anything, something, that would make sense of this conversation and its abruptly inexplicable turn. He remembered Pedro, his fathers cousin, vaguely. He was a joyful man, always smiling, laughing… A lot like Horatia, in truth. However, from what he remembered, Pedro Borgia died when they were still young, before Lucrezia's and Horatia's birth. No… Yes, it had something to do with a fight, he believed… Or a duel, a contest that had broken out in a tavern on a dusky night, over a this or that belonging… A theft? Yes, Pedro was murdered when the assailant thieved something from him.

"This… This changes everything."

Vannozza muttered, almost reverently, as she stared bottomlessly at the twig. Juan could keep quiet no longer. If this… Stick had something to do with Pedro, if Horatia was carrying the same stick, if one had died and the other was abducted, stabbed, nearly murdered to, what did that mean for Horatia now?

"I do not understand father. What is the relation between Pedro, the English and Horatia's abduction? Did they play a part in his death to?"

Vannozza is the one to answer him.

"Your sister is special. Very special… Gifted."

 _Gifted?_ That word, so genial, benevolent, really, in most everyday use, became something dreadful to Juan then. There was a humbleness to his mother's voice, dusted with awe but there, in the curl of her vowels, there was a pit of fear too. It was that fear that quickened his heartbeat to pounding levels. Was Horatia safe? Would she be attacked again? Before Juan could voice any of his concerns, his father was intervening, addressing them all with a sweeping scan of the room before his sight dropped and sealed onto a still slumbering Horatia.

"By the divine itself. Such gifts are often attached to not so sympathetic reactions. Those of jealousy, fear and unease. That is why this-"

Once again, Rodrigo was holding out the stick, voicelessly ordering them to look at it, recognise it, absorb his words.

"Will not be spoken of outside this family. No matter what you witness or hear, none of it, and I mean none of it, will be spoken of outside this family to anybody. Do I make myself clear?"

Lucrezia's voice was cautious, fearful, as she drew herself away from the wall she had backed into, hands bunched into her skirts as she sidled up to their father, doe-eyed and flushed.

"Will they hurt her if they, other people, find out about these gifts?"

Rodrigo's stern face crumbled as his hand fell to his side, point now made, as he wrapped an arm around Lucrezia's shoulders, tugging her into a warm embrace to his chest.

"Oh, little dove, come here. No, no. We won't let them."

Lucrezia smiled dotingly as she hugged him back, reassured by their fathers placating tone, where their older brother, Cesare, only became more intrigued by this whole ordeal.

"These gifts, they are not… Ordinary, are they? She is not just merely good at her numbers, or languages, or sowing-"

Juan cut him off.

"Does it matter? She's our sister. Gifts or no gifts, she has returned."

Cesare slashed him an inquisitive look, one, for reasons unknown to Juan, he had to look away from. It felt intrusive, too heavy. Still, from the corner of his eye, he saw Cesare grin and nod.

"Alone, we are strong. Together, we are stronger. Isn't that what you so often tell us, father?"

Rodrigo unwound an arm from Lucrezia to slap Cesare on the shoulder as the older man chuckled indulgently, deeply. Cesare too, pulled their mother to his side, to hug her with one arm as she smiled up at him. The image was bittersweet for Juan.

"Exactly, my son! And now more than ever!"

Finally finding it in his will power, Juan heaved himself up from the base of the bed, tottering over to the table near the door, where the wine and goblets were kept, to pour himself, in his own mind, a well-deserved drink. It didn't pass his notice, as it never did, that his mother, father, Lucrezia and Cesare formed a tight circle, condensed together in their happiness, huddled and he, the ever intruder, cast to the corner of the room, looking in.

An eternity passed as hush lapsed upon them, as one drink became two, and then a third. It seemed they had all been put in purgatory, unsure, unsteady on what to say or do now that the physician was gone. Cesare, Lucrezia, Vannozza and Rodrigo found comfort in their close proximity, Juan found an imitation, cheap and disdainful, in the bottom of his goblet. The wine tasted vile in that moment.

And then, there it was. Just a shuffle, a ruffle of sheet sweeping sheet, but it came. A voice, dulcet, broken, croaky and dry but utterly resplendent in its own confused but almost tenderly desperate calling of a singular name.

"Juan? Juan?"

His cup fell to the table as he dropped it into place, careless and rushed, as he twisted around. Horatia, with her eyes so foggy, blinking swiftly, was trying to heave herself up onto her elbows, grimacing deeply from the pain clearly emanating from her stomach, but still trying to search the bright, sunlight filled room. His name… She was calling for him, her first thought was of him, in her moment of confusion, pain and dislodgement, it was him she was appealing for. _Him._

Before anyone else could move or intervene, almost mindless himself, Juan was at the bedside, by her hip, slipping down upon knees so he could be eye level. Her arms were trembling cruelly from the effort to hold herself up, and so, he went to grab her biceps, to ease the stress and strain, to take the weight, and he felt her jolt as she reached up to grapple onto his own arms, those unfocused eyes beginning to clear, as they drifted and fastened upon his own.

"Juan?"

She smiled then, all tooth and dimple and it was so vivacious, so spirited, it was almost blinding in its extraordinarily glorious exquisiteness. On instinct, he found himself mirroring her smile, as if they were just reflections bouncing off one another, one being, definite. Nevertheless, that sweet, sweet moment was broken when her significant eyes grew wet, her lip, in the very far corner, quaking, her nostrils quivering as they flared to suck in a jagged breath and her hands, clutching at the velvet of his doublet, began to shake like a grand castle crumbling.

"I thought I dreamt it all."

Heedful of her Stomach, Juan eased himself closer, onto the edge of the bed, folding her into his chest, wrapping his arms around her shaking form as tears started to fall. Her own arms automatically braced around him, one digging into his back, persistent, the other wrapping into the locks at the base of his neck, tight, scared, fearful as if she was terrified that should she let go, him, this, all this, would float away like an afternoon cloud. Juan ran a hand, gentle, through her curly hair as he murmured fondly to her, as he once did, long ago, when she was a babe.

"It isn't a dream. I'm here. I've got you."

She sobbed harder.

* * *

 **WOO OR BOO?**

 _ **A quick question:**_

1\. Whose P.O.V do you want to see next? The choices are Rodrigo, Lucrezia or Cesare (as we've already seen Vannozza's, Horatia's and Juan's, and I thought it might be fun to dabble into someone else next.)

 **ON UPDATES:** I'm currently bogged down with heavy university coursework, but I'm trying to publish at least on chapter a week. I'm going to aim for Wednesday's, but if that fails, the update should (fingers crossed) come on a Friday.

 _All spelling, grammar and mistakes in general, are all mine. I have no beta-reader, and, well, most of this is written on the train at half-six in the morning while I commute to Uni, so most of it is coffee driven, so one or two mistakes are bound to pop up here and there. I do proof read, grammar check and spell check, but I'm sure one or two slip through. I hope this doesn't bother many people._

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 ** _NOTES ON THIS CHAPTER:_**

 _1._ The Borgia family was renowned for their ambition for power. This, of course, made me think of the Elder wand. When I came up with the idea to mix a magical line, Lily Evan's to be exact, into the Borgia family, I knew I wanted to have hints already present before Horatia, so she didn't just spring up from nothing, and so, I came up with Pedro (Although, Rodrigo, in real life, did have a cousin that was called Pedro who died in his early years, mid-twenties I believe.). Having Pedro in command of the Elder wand at some stage of his life, likely due to that thirst for power most Borgia's show, the wand plucked by death from the very tree I mentioned in this chapter that grows at the edge of their vine-grove estate, seemed to fit poetically for Horatia's story. The Elder wand, like Horatia, ventured out into the unknown, faced death, fear and war, only to end up right back where they were birthed. Ironic, and a little bit sad too, which I thought fit perfectly with the tone I wanted in this chapter.

2\. I know Cesare seems a bit... Cold, this chapter, a bit cautious, questioning, and detached, but I really wanted to add that in as this chapter is, after-all, told through Juan's eyes, so it isn't exactly none biased. He sees Cesare as the overbearing, stern, always questioning older brother, and so, that is _all_ he sees (At the moment). I also see Cesare as the most guarded Borgia. He's good at masking his own emotions, disciplining them into submission, hiding his true thoughts and intentions and, that too, I wanted to be written in. So, when we do get to his P.O.V, it will really feel as if we're looking through his eyes instead of another interpretation of Juan's thoughts.

3\. The myth Juan thinks of when he is first looking at Horatia, of Pan and a woodland nymph, was quite appropriate, I thought, and underlies the oncoming _inappropriate_ feelings. (I.e... Incest XD). The myth goes, (the version I have read, at any rate. For there are many versions) very simply, that Pan, the maker of panic, trickery (a nod at magic in this fic) and wilderness (I think both Horatia and Juan can be classed as wild), ran across a woodland nymph. He soon became infatuated (as all Greek gods do lol), and chased after her. She, thinking it was a game, ran away. A game of catch me if you can ensued. However, she was good at hiding (hinting at Horatia's own disappearance), but the memory of her kept Pan chasing for years. (How Juan still thought of Horatia and their bond throughout the years.) Eventually, her woodland nymph sisters grew jealous of her attention from a god, and turned her into reeds. Pan searched high and low, but never found her. Eventually, he did find the reeds, and hearing the wind blow through them, he heard his lovers voice once more and cut them free, tying them together so he could play them, thus creating his iconic _pan_ flute, so he could cherish her voice for eternity. (underlying Juan's reaction to hearing Horatia calling _his_ name first, after awakening). Not only did I think this, in a rather subtle way, pins what's really going on, but I will probably be adding more Grecian and Roman myths to this story as the renaissance, which is where this is set, was the revival of Grecian and roman myths, literature, art and architecture in Italy. Plus, who doesn't like playing around with mythology? No? Just me?

* * *

 **A MASSIVE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE!** Silent readers, followers, favourite-ers, reviewers, if I could, I would all give you a hug, but I'm afraid my thanks will have to do.

 _ **As always, please drop a review if you have a moment, they keep the muses chattering.**_


	3. Chapter 3

**_Subiaco, Italy, 1492._**

 ** _Cesare's P.O.V_**

 _Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are._ No more a fitting Epitaph could be immortalized on Cesare Borgia's tomb. His mother, Vannozza, saw him as the ever-obedient son, the kneeling priest, the boy who smiled and hung onto his fathers, Rodrigo's, every word. She could not see his disillusionment, his shaded eyes when he gazed upon the church, at his father, at their family the older he got.

Juan saw him as fathers' favourite, the arrogant son who had everything he wished for without ever working for it. Juan could not see the displeasure, the envy within his heart, as hard as he fought it off, when, in fact, it was Juan who had everything he ever wanted, and every title, every ducat, every scrap Cesare had, he had to sweat, bleed and toil for.

Lucrezia saw his smiles, his sweetened words, and thought him happy and relaxed. He couldn't be further. She did not see his dark circles, did not see him toss and turn at night, see his whitened knuckles or clenched jaw after private meetings with their father.

Rodrigo was the worst. Their father saw him as a formless mass, something to mould and sharpen, to shine and polish, to refine. He did not see Cesare as his own man, with his own mind, his own dreams, his own feelings. Oh, how he reviled that.

Nonetheless, back then, when Juan and Horatia were huddled together, clinging, crying and sharing their happiness, as her cries quietened and Juan brought her peace, as she never, not once, glanced his-… Their way, he, for once, missed that duplicitous nature he had garnered throughout his life. For, at least with them, Lucrezia, mother, father, Juan, he was _seen,_ even if that image was distorted by their own wants and desires. No, in that moment, back then, Horatia had only eyes for Juan and, that, being left as a phantom, invisible, unheard, unwitnessed, _stung._

What throbbed even worse was the rejection of any chance to rip off his cloak of invisibility when Rodrigo gently but urgently pulled Juan away from her, muted to Juan's posturing rebuffs at being drawn away, as Rodrigo took centre stage and drew Horatia's gaze. Then Rodrigo had stood tall, held out that strange stick to her, and as she saw it, tears still crusting on eyelash, her voice turned cold and dead, wet, like a hooked fish as two words spilled from her lips.

"You know."

Vannozza, before any more could be said or done, had swept them up by elbow, ushering the three protesting siblings out into the hallway resolutely, before ordering them to leave, voice strangely stern, so Horatia could speak to them, her and Rodrigo, undisturbed, and to leave the chamber, and those rooms, uninterrupted until Horatia was ready to come to them.

Of course, the siblings obeyed… For an hour or two. None of them were known for their patience, and neither could deny a good challenge, but they had been thwarted at every turn. Their mother knew them too well, and having raised them from the breast, knew their games intimately. She knew Lucrezia would only plead for so long before she would try and sneak through the doorway come dusk. So, Vannozza had her tutor change her lesson times, so come sun-fall, Lucrezia was too occupied with her sowing, poetry, dance and music lessons to steal anywhere but to her own bed. Vannozza knew Juan would bribe a servant to tell him when the rooms were clear of mother and father, so he could venture in unobstructed. For that, Juan was sent out of the house from sunrise to sunset, sent on odd errands, endless lists of tasks to complete daily, all excused with being of the utmost importance, to keep him tired when he did, eventually, retire to his own chambers. For Cesare, something simpler had been constructed.

Knowing her son as she did, that he could gain entrance to anywhere he so wished he could, given time, she and Rodrigo merely sent him away. Naturally, it was not far, only to his own bishopric a six hours ride from their Villa, with the excuse of his clerical duties needing his courtesy immediately, but the dismissal, at such a time, still festered. At least Juan and Lucrezia were kept close.

Still, he would not be stalled for long. There were too many questions to be asked, riddles that needed endings, knots to the tapestry, and really, all he truly wanted to do was to great his sister. How could that one request be denied? It couldn't. Not forever.

So, here he was, a week after being sent away, sliding down from his horse in the early morning, just past daybreak, after the arduous six hours ride he had made in four, after leaving his Dioceses obligations to his fellow priests after he had finished with all administration responsibilities for the next full moon cycle. Tying the reigns off on a small wooden post for one of the stable boys to deal with at a later time, Cesare patted his robes off from riding dust as he began his way down the curling path, through their blossoming vineyard that was coming close to being harvested, that enveloped their little terracotta tiled Villa in Subiaco. Certainly, he could have rode to the Villa itself, but the walk coupled with the cool morning wind would, hopefully, lighten his soured disposition, soothe his frayed soul and clear his darkened thoughts from his stormy mind.

It was as he was coming around the bend, at the bottom of the little hill that slopped on the east of their quaint home, when something quick, a flash, out of the corner of his eye, stilled his lifted boot. Through the wooden fence posts, where thick, resplendent green vines with fattening plum tinted grapes dangling from puckered leaves, he saw a dart of colour, a glimpse of ebony, a flare of crimson, a spark of ivory. Frowning, Cesare cocked his head as he partially turned towards the flicker of colours, or more aptly, where he had seen them to be. Strolling over, lifting a swinging vine, crouching low, Cesare ducked underneath the post and into the narrow path between vine-groves. One side was empty, nothing but cheery grass and calming sunrise, but when he turned around, into the direction he saw the colours sweep, it was there, that he found her, hidden in natures bosom, protected by root and quickened vine. His sister, Horatia.

She was still adorned in a thin shift, the hem brushing ankle, cuffs tied off at lean wrists. Her pale feet, delicate and petite, stood out amongst the grass, little toes curling sporadically, dipping between blades, toying with the soil as she stood there, one had filled with fat little grapes, palm stained purple as she plucked one from the bunch and nipped at it, sucking the rolling juice off her thumb with a pop. Over her shoulders, as if it was a blanket or cape, was draped a cardinal's robe, unbuttoned, likely their fathers, thick with fine wool and satin, magnificent in red, slinking down her small form to bar any morning chill from goose-pimpling her flesh. Her unruly hair was braided simply in one thick plait, flung over her shoulder so the end tickled belly button, knotted at the end by a thread, with that strange stick of hers piercing a loop to dangle at ribcage.

Cesare wouldn't call Horatia beautiful. She wasn't pretty, not in most senses of the word, not in ways many men would describe beauty to be, write poems and plays to, and decidedly not like many Italian women. Horatia lacked their pale, teary eyes and light golden, finely oiled and slicked curls that spoke of practiced perfection. Horatia's hair spoke of rambunctious abandonment, a wilderness left, untouched by man or god, to prosper and flourish in its own, unique way. Her features were too sharp, sliced marble and chiselled angles, to have their soft innocence. Yet, deceitful innocence they may lack, but they offered their own sleek sort of strength, a sprite humour, a happy Fae sort of twist refined by her dimples, that found laughter, euphoria and joy, in even the most dire of times. Her body spoke of swiftness and agility, fast and compact, thin and deviously slight, but strong against their slow, plump lethargy.

Yet, it was her eyes that were most catching. They alluded to untameable promise, dared not spoken, unnaturally bright as they were, keen and cunning, with a husky taste of a seductive sort of madness that pulsated from pupil. She was all feral anarchy trapped in human skin, bound to this earthly plain, embodying something _other_ that called to a man's very soul, not his mind or eyes or tongue. To call her purely beautiful seemed, at least to Cesare, to limit that endless, ethereal wilderness she personified.

As she finished off the last grape, he saw her hand gingerly skim her stomach, where he knew her wound to be, and at the visual reminder, he seemed to come back to himself, to his right mind, and shook those thoughts adamantly away, to chafe somewhere else in the dark. The ride had been harsh, long and winding. He needed to rest. By her wince when she pulled her hand away to flop at her side, he wasn't the only one.

"You should be resting, dear sis."

And still, there was a hundred and one questions to ask, so many, and none, not one, would leave his lips. Where had she been? How did she find them? Who had inflicted her scars? Where had she lived? How well was she fed? Had she been kept warm? Safe? Perhaps, in part, he was afraid of those answers for, mayhap, he already knew them. One did not gain scars such as she from a happy childhood. She jolted for a moment before her eyes skidded to him, warming at the sight, sparkling like sunbeams bouncing off a pool of fresh water.

"It only seemed right to see the sunrise in face to face. I didn't think it was possible for a place to be so warm or sunny. Plus, everyone is sleeping peacefully. I didn't want to disturb them."

Her turns of phrases were funny things indeed, these _plus's_ and _face to face's_ , as if the sun could have such a thing. Still, there were secrets there, bleeding out between her words, ones Cesare, who had been observant as a child and even more dangerously so as an adult, could pick up like deer tracks. Wherever she had been for all these years, the weather had been more ill-tempered. Cold, cloudy perhaps, snow even. North. That fit in with the doctor's own findings, his theory of England.

Cesare had never personally visited England, there had been no need, but he had heard tales from bishops who came back from papal work, of the coldness, the dampness, the stern and overly proud people. The country had barely just dragged itself out of civil war, painted over with the moniker of war of the roses, but no less bloody that had torn their country apart and stained their soil red. What sort of life could his sister have born there? In the frigid winds, wet sands and even colder people? One such as she, who looked so at home in the sunlight, in their warm vineyard, trapped in moors and marshes? One, he bitterly swallowed, he did not wish to think of.

"Do you remember much?"

 _Do you remember me?_ Is what he wants to ask, the last word netting in his throat before it could be expelled, morphing into something less personally, less intimate. Oddly, he finds he too, again, is afraid of this answer. Perhaps that is why he changed it to the abstract, could not edge himself to dare the closer alternative. This uncertainty, this unsteadiness, it was not like him. All perhaps's, caught words and hidden meanings. He had not been this nervous since father had forced him into priesthood at age twelve. Idly, he watched Horatia's gaze flutter up to the sky, wide, as she observed a colourful butterfly dance into the air, up and away, over the horizon. When she smiled, his nerves flew away like that butterfly, swiftly and elegantly.

"I remember… Reflections. Moments. Senses. I remember this vineyard, how the ripe grapes taste in the summer, the golden haze it casts itself in on autumn months. I remember the safety of Juan's hugs. I remember the feel of laughter, happiness and the smell of him. I remember the tickle of Lucrezia as she rolled around, the perception of thread and gold, the feel of her laying next to me, around me. I remember the soft murmur of your voice, the rhythm of a nursery rhyme, the taste of honey and warmth… I can still hum that song to this very day."

Her lips pressed together gently and the humming of a beat picked up in the air, soft and melodious. Cesare couldn't stop his own grin, wide and glinting, from stretching across his face.

"It is called Canto Bello. You used to fall asleep to it when I hummed it to you at night."

The short song stopped, and Cesare missed it, intensely, when the last note faded. As if the death of the song was irrevocably linked to Horatia's own good mood, as it died, so seemingly did her smile. Her gaze fell from the sky, dropping to the floor at her feet, as her hands came together, finger fiddling with finger, voice tight.

"Rodrigo says we are going to Rome soon. That we will live there, in the heart of the city… Where the _church_ is."

Cesare would be lying if he said her understood Horatia's sudden worry and emphasis of the word church, and exactly what that meant and what she was trying to convey. If he did not know better, if England had not been a catholic country for many a century already, a convey of Christ, he would take her hesitant tone as being fearful. But that was an impossibility. She had grown up with the church, surely as any Englishman and woman did, and fear should not be present.

Only pagans, heretics and blasphemers needed fear of the church, and even then, with good smarts, they needn't. Look at him, there wasn't a day that went by without him questioning one doctrine or another, asking what the point of it all was, and he was a _bishop,_ the son of a cardinal. If one such as he, with his own doubts and misgivings, could live the life he did, no doubt others could to. Their family, even being the ecclesiastical one that it was, was not remotely close to being anything _holy._ Additionally, her secrets were oozing out again, said but unspoken, between her vowels, but this time, they were not her own but their fathers, Rodrigo's.

If their father was moving them to Rome so soon, it could mean only one thing. The rumours were true. The pope was ill, gravely so if the move was taking place before the harvest, if they, the Borgia, were to swarm the Vatican. Time must be drawing near for fathers plans. Inside his chest, a flare of unadulterated anger sparked. It had been barely a week, perhaps a week and a half, since Horatia had first appeared. She had not fully recovered, she was still so clearly injured, her own loud hesitation when she muttered the word church was still ringing in his ears, and here they were… No, not they, here _father_ was, planning to move her across country. She needed time, peace, to recover. Things she would not find in Rome. He must speak with father. Of course, he said none of this. His words, usually so easy to him, were failing this morn.

"Do you not call him father?"

His lacklustre pun fell short. Oh, she chuckled, but it seemed so small, so lost, as her hands wound tighter around themselves, firm and fastening.

"Seems wrong, to me, to call a stranger father. All I know, at the moment, are faceless reflections."

His tongue felt bloated, fatty and useless, as he swallowed deeply, something hot jarring in his throat. Before he could stop himself, before he could fully think the words and analyse their meanings, choose them as carefully as he chose everything else in his life, they were there, out there, for all the world to bare witness to.

"And am I a stranger?"

He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, or perhaps it's the Canto Bello, who knew anymore? Her hands stopped twisting, her stare lifted up to him, her head cocking slightly to the side as she regarded him closely, and she smiled so brilliantly that the beat in his ears burst to a crescendo of butterfly wings.

"You're _Cesare._ "

She said it as if that was all that mattered, could matter and would matter. He was not Cesare, the bishop. He was not Cesare, the brother. He was not Cesare, the prodigal son. Here, right now, to her, he was Just Cesare, and that was more profoundly touching, he was sure, than even gods grace could feel. He knew it to, as deeply as he knew his own palm, his own gait, his own mind. He knew she could see him, _him,_ she could peep underneath the mask, between his cracks and peer fearlessly down inside him, right to the bone, and still, she was smiling at what she saw, she was still smiling at _him._ Cesare walked closer but she had not finished.

"Have you ever drowned, Cesare?"

He shook his head as he came to her side. Once again, she was back to looking up at the immense, blue sky, speaking to that butterfly that flew away.

"I feel like I've been drowning all these years. Caught in the cusp of the in-between, lost to that frenzy of survival and now, here, my head has finally breached the tide and for the first time… The first time in so long, I can _breathe._ The colours all seem brighter here, the smell more poignant, the ground more solid and it's all so… New. New and, if I'm honest, terrifying."

His hand lifted up of its own accord, ostentatious signet ring glinting in the morn sun, to find its home upon her shoulder, squeezing comfortingly through the cardinal robe.

"There's nothing to be afraid of. No one here will hurt you."

Surely, if she could see, really see, him for him, she would know that too? For the last time, her gaze dropped back to him, smile decaying around the edges, still happy, but remiss, accepting, melancholic and contrarily calm. Paradoxes. She was made of them, like the moon and stars made the night sky.

"There's _everything_ to be afraid of now. Not the things themselves, no, not them. But the loss of them, the chance that this, after everything, can be lost? That petrifies me. You can't fear losing what you don't have, but now I have it… I have you all and never have I felt this fear before. But here I am, feeling as if something from above is about to drop right on top of my head, that the bubble will burst, the axeman will come, the dream will end. What if I fall asleep and-"

It was then that he noticed them, the signs, the little hints of unease within her. The dark circles bruising underneath her large eyes a dark purple, her adamant venture outside, even while being injured, of greeting the sunrise, to see for herself a new day ushered in and no abrupt drop out of a dream befell her. She was so sure, so very sure, that this, them, would all be taken away, snatched from her straining grasp. She had experienced loss before, she must have, to be so certain that it would come to her again, to know it well enough to fear it and that realisation physically hurt him. Raising his other hand, he planted it upon her free shoulder and turned her around, chest to chest, face to face.

"You will not be taken again, nor will you lose anything. As Juan told you, this is not a dream. Look at me."

Her blinking eyes, which had refused to meet his own, finally lifted from his chin to his. There was hurt there, cavernous resonating pain, unsurety of herself, of them, of this place she was now in, but there was aching wonder there too, a blossom of hope, a spark of unflinching life in all shades and colours. She reminded him of a bird then, wing injured and clipped, unable to fly, but still alive and determined and fighting to grace the sky once more.

"I promise you, you will not feel another loss. Not one. Not while I am still here."

Her eyebrow tilted up, a daring little smile tweaking at the corner of her lips, ruffling the bridge of her nose.

"Promises are just sweet lies, lullabies for the blind and the foolish."

He couldn't lie to her. She, her soul, seemed to old for it. What she had lived through had hardened her, turned her taciturn towards the world, cynical and removed. Nonetheless, despite all this, or possibly because of it, conflicting to this bleak outlook she had gained of the world, of life, she still held hope. Astonishing, marvellous hope. He could show her that hope was not in vain, that, come what may, he would be here, with her. They all would.

"The fool doth think he is a wiseman, but a wiseman does know he is a fool, and faith can only ever be blind. Perhaps in this world, dear sis, it is best to be both, for only then can we feel true happiness."

For the first time, since she had spotted Juan in what felt like a lifetime ago, she gave a true smile to the world, to him. It wasn't as great, wasn't as toothy, but it was warm. So very, very affectionate.

"Then let us be a merry bunch of sightless jesters, you and I."

Gradually, as if skimming over his own reflection mirrored back from a rippling pond, Cesare glided his hands down the lengths of her arms, over her small wrists, to come to a hold her hands, to which she squeezed back.

"Father says you are special…"

Then they, Horatia's supple and pleasingly warm hands were gone, and she was wrapping her arms around herself firmly, barricading herself away, locking him out. Suddenly, the small breeze fluttering around them felt just a mite more cold, bitter, and Cesare didn't enjoy the sensation of being shut out.

"Is that the word he used for it? Well, I suppose that's one of many."

She gave him a wry smile, but it was forged from unease, hollow. He enjoyed this less than he did the feeling of being bolted out.

"What would you call it?"

She didn't miss a beat.

"Here and now?... Solitary."

Cesare's brow pinched together over his dark eyes.

"That seems like an awfully lonely word."

It did. Tremendously lonely. Still enfolded in her own embrace, she noncommittedly shrugged, her voice turning wispy, blithe, isolated, similar to a candle recently extinguished, still smoking, wick still crackling, but fire… Passion, gone.

"A lonely word for a lonely world. I suppose it is, in some sense. But it's also freeing in a way. Boundless. All doors are open and my choices are finally my own. Furthermore, I have Juan, Lucrezia, Vannozza, Rodrigo and you, if you all would have me."

She wasn't trying to convince him, Cesare knew that. She was trying to convince _herself._ If she wasn't confident that this would all fade away around her, she was certain she would be turned aside. What secrets, what sins or martyrdoms, what specialty did she hold that she was assured so thoroughly that it would conclude in either way? None of them, not one in their family, were exempt from the… Darker brushes of life.

Juan had his jealousy, his unruly temper. Mother had her formidable pride. There was no man, nor beast, on this green earth who was more ambitious or cunning as their father. Lucrezia, dear, beloved, innocent Lucrezia… She knew exactly what to say, do or portray to get what she wanted. And his? Cesare's list of vices, dark deeds and darker thoughts, were too hefty, too long, to exonerate here. Their family was intelligent, yes. Loyal, certainly. Heart-strong, there was no doubt. But none of them were exempt of their own devious immoralities and corruptions. Not one of them had any right, any precedence, to damn Horatia for her own, whatever they may be.

"Why would we not?"

Her smile turned acidic, sardonic, barbed with irony and dry sort of kept knowledge that one had when they were part of the inside joke.

"I wouldn't make any more promises, if I was you. Especially before you see what exactly makes me so… _Special._ "

He tried to reach for her, but she stepped back, away, urgent in her need to stand alone. Perhaps, really, it was because that, this loneliness, this isolation, this remote form of living, was the only way she knew how to exist. That… That was more woeful than anything Cesare could have thought her life previously to be. For the hurt, the pain, the joys and sorrows she had gone through, to make her think, believe, that this solitude was the best form of protection, the only method of peace, was heartbreaking.

"Horatia, no one is going to turn their backs upon you."

Her lips thinned, and silence reigned as she was outwardly lost to her own thoughts, reduced into her inner-world. Then, he could see it with own eyes, some sort of strength pulled from the gut, the very pit of her, shone out, straightened her spine, stiffened her shoulders and brought a keen edge to her eyes and grin. Her arms dropped, her head cocked, and she took a single step closer. Cesare's heart thundered.

"Tell me, if there is one thing, the most outlandish, eccentric, inconceivable dream you have ever had, ever since you were a child… If you could have one thing, anything, that was beyond your humanly reach, what would it be?"

To leave this ecclesiastical life. To be a warrior, in armour, proudly wearing their family sigil. To be where his blood called for him to be, on the battlefield, sword in hand, honour for the taking. However, that _was_ feasibly accessible. All he would have to do is once, just once, not cave to father and Rodrigo's own visions for their family. Yet, that in and of itself, felt like it would take a miracle. So, he turned his gaze to the sky and thought of misplaced juvenile imaginings.

"I've always dreamt of flying."

Her grin grew wide as she idly nodded, hand slithering up to her ribcage, to the stick, before she pulled it free from its braided prison. With a conspiratory glance around them, finding birds and bees as their only spectators, she aimed the very tip at him and changed the very world, everything, Cesare had ever known.

"Wingardium Leviosa."

The first thing to strike him was the sensation, the bubbling, the weightlessness as his feet flopped. It was only as he glanced down, confused on where the floor had gone, that he saw the grass was still there, that it had not moved or shifted, but it was _he_ who was moving, gliding, rising… Flying into the air. From underneath the deafening sounds of his own heart in his ears, he could hear Horatia's bright chuckle as he startled in the air, eyes growing wide as his hands shot out as if to steady himself but found nothing but air for purchase.

How… When… By the lord's divine love… Before the confusion could settle in fully, before wonder could really grip him, he was back down, on soil, grounded, and Horatia was still giggling as she waved him over closer, crouching down low into the grass. He would not lie, for a moment he thought he had gone mad, that visions had stuck him, profane and carnal imaginings, and he thought of running. Where? He did not know, but the urge to flee, as quick as it was, had come and gone.

Still, step by step, he found himself creeping closer, slinking down to her level, shoulder brushing shoulder as he looked at her face which was turned to the ground. All he could do was watch, wonderstruck, as her hand pressed into the soil, splayed fingered and flat palmed, blades tickling wrist.

"I look upon a field and I can make it in bloom with nothing but a thought."

There was… Yes, there really was a light, velvety, vivid, yellow, comparable to sunbeams, emanating from her hand pushed to the ground and then the narrow vine-grove before them was bursting to life. Flowers erupted forth, unfurling from thick, bountiful stalks that grew inhumanly fast, petals exploding in brilliant reds and unnatural golds, emerald greens and decadent purples. It was raw. It was baffling. It was _beautiful._ She reared up, kindly holding onto his elbow to bring him with her. It was a good thing to, he didn't think he could stand.

"In the darkness, I can bring stars."

Plump little balls of light, as if she had stretched up and plucked the very stars from their heavenly home, appeared around them, floating, swaying, curling. Cesare span, gaze darting from one to the next as an incredulous laugh broke free from his chest. Dreaming. He must be dreaming. But then he came around another cycle, saw Horatia's face, saw the joy radiating from her features, so pure, so selfless, at simply being happy that he was smiling that his breath caught in his throat and he knew this, all this, was real.

"I can bring life to things that had none."

She reached out to a button at her breast, on their father's crimsons robes and ripped it free with a sharp tug. She placed the small button into the middle of her palm, offered her hand out, high and proud, and closed her eyes. For a second, nothing happened. Yet, sluggishly, the button began to bounce, shake and then there was an explosion in the palm of her hand, an eruption of feathers of the purest white, and she was no longer holding a button but a bird, a dove singing vibrant and lively. Her eyes crack open, she brought the creature close to her face and gave it a little tickle underneath the beak, before, still smiling so luminously, she threw it up into the air where it took flight, singing jubilantly as it circled around their heads. Once more, he couldn't halt his own laughter as he watched the button-bird fly.

"Yet… When the flowers bore me, or the smell becomes nauseating, I could blaze it all to the ground."

His stare snapped to her, his fleeting elated bafflement ceased by the dark credence her voice took. There was no time to fear her meaning, not when she was so prepared to follow through and give illustration. The stunning flowers around them, in all their unearthly glory, exploded into flames, stalks wilting, blackening, bright petals shrivelling to ash, the noise of the flames, the crackling of bud and stem sounded like tiny screams, horrific screams.

"When the light is too bright, I can take it away from all men."

He could only observe as she raised her free hand and merely clicked her fingers. Then he saw nothing. Naught. Just darkness. Bottomless. Vast nothingness that made him feel so absolutely, dreadfully, insignificant and alone. It was quick, this trip into voided purgatory, a simple heartbeat, a blink, before he heard the click again and the world was opening back up to him, unfurling, but he would never forget that darkness.

"When the birds song annoys me, I can quieten it. Forever."

Above them the birds wings spasmed, it's stout body contorted and then with a sickening crunch that rang clearer than any church bells Cesare had ever heard, it was pulled into itself, disappearing with a puff of thick purple smoke, tendrils coiling into the endless sky and it was then, watching that little dove, so happy, so pure, be whisked from existence, life Horatia had given it with nothing but a careless wave of her hand, as if brushing away a foul smell, did his stomach sink to levels he knew not it could. Still, she pushed on.

"I could invade your mind, rape your thoughts, if the impulse took me. With one lock of your hair, I could wear your face, be you. I could make you feel the worst pain ever to be wrought, so strong that madness, utter madness, would be all you would know after. You wouldn't even know your own name. I can dismember, torch and demolish everything and anything in ways you have never imagined. I could take everything you are and change it, contort and distort it, to fit my own desires, my own whims of fancy. Cesare…"

She took a step forward, closer, pressing in on him and he could not move, he could barely breathe, he felt bolted to the floor, a tree that had taken root, twisting and gnarled.

"We're not even speaking the same language right now… I'm speaking English and, through will and wand, you are hearing Italian…You only understand me because I want you to, and I want you to understand me. The _real_ me. There is no limit when it comes to people like me. There is no constraint to _me._ If you can imagine it, we-… I can do it. For as much glory and happiness I can bring, equal sorrow and pain can be thrust. This is _me_ , Cesare."

He would not lie, the things he had witnessed, the miracles and carnages, terrified him. The possibility of this, this _specialness,_ that Horatia had, in the ways it could be used, horrified him. Never before, in his life, with his own eyes, had he heard or seen something close to being so godly, so pure, and equally demonic and savage in its base submission. It was like he was seeing an angel, haloed and holy, but its wings were crooked, horns were sprouting out of its head and the clash of purity and sin felt like it was boiling him from the inside out.

Through this, through the fear of damnation, the exaltation of divinity, he saw _her._ His sister. He saw her as a babe, rounded and rosy cheeked, cradled in his own small arms as he hummed Canto Bello to her in the cusp of night. He saw her toothless giggle as Juan bounced her around. He saw the flutter of her lashes as Lucrezia cuddled up to her. He saw the babe she used to be.

Concurrently, he saw her as she was now. Pale, swallowing, wounded and there, where she was holding her stick, the limb was trembling, and he knew she was frightened of what was to come. She was scared that he would not be able to see the child she used to be and still see the person she was now as one being. In the end, she was exactly like him, stuck in a duplicitous loop of what others saw and what they truly were, and like he, she was anxious of what others would think if they truly looked beneath the mask. She wasn't an angel. She wasn't a demon. She was irreversibly human. And, more importantly, his sister.

"You _could_ , you said. You never said you _would._ You seem, to me, to be one that does not idly or lazily choose her words. The question here is _would_ you do these things?"

It's her reaction that shows him the truth, shows him her soul, that lightness she had about her that was bone deep. Her nose crinkled, her lips curled and her eyes winced as she became disgusted at even concieving of doing such things.

"Of course I wouldn't, but that doesn't matter. I'm still capable of it, and therefore, if any of you wish to turn me away, I would not blame you. I can't live a lie and you all deserve the truth."

The incidents she had done before, the flowers, the stars, the dove, they were where she wanted to be, what she wanted to do, she had smiled and laughed as she had done them. The fire, the darkness, the zap from existence, they were only things she had allowed herself to be stained with to emphasize her point, to lift her own mask so Cesare could see her own demons. But they weren't her demons, they were someone else's, borrowed to show him that, as she had said, there were no restrictions to people like her. In the end, she only wanted Cesare to see her for her, all potentials and varieties included, like he wished many would see him as.

"It does matter, Horatia. It is the _only_ thing that matters. Your soul has no nook or cranny to hold such gloom or darker deeds."

His words shocked her as she blinked up owlishly at him.

"You really believe so?"

Cesare closed the distance between them, feeling sorrow as she flinched when he went to clasp her face between his own hands, like a hound beaten too often and too hard by a master for misdeeds it had not done. Her skin felt hot to the touch, almost burning, branding him. The mystery of her past, those riddles and puzzles, seemed so inconsequential in the light of tomorrow, of what could come. The answers of her past could wait, Horatia's future is what is vital. He understood that now. She was hurt, he knew, in ways not just physical, and that broke his heart more than he could speak of. No more.

"I know so… Because I can still see the button-dove hiding in the bush over there."

Cesare chuckled as he pointedly nodded over her shoulder, towards a little crux of space between vines, where, hidden and safe, the little dove Horatia had conjured, with his magnificent white and golden feathers, stood hopping from one foot to another. For a moment, she looked bashfully shy at being caught out in a little white lie, before she chuckled herself at being caught out. His hands dropped from her face as she whistled highly, as the bird happily jumped from its hidey hole and flew over and onto her outstretched hand. It preened proudly as she gently stroked its pearlescent head.

"It felt too cruel to kill him. I couldn't do it. Look at him, he's a happy little fellow, isn't he?"

There was no demon here, no mystical beast. Just a young girl, pure of heart, with divinity at her fingertips. Juan may have been the first person she called for, but it was Cesare that was shown her darkest secret, what she _believed_ to be her darkest secret, of her own free will, first. It was he that she was happy with taking her mask off for. Cesare reached out and stroked the button-doves breast.

"You are my sister, with this and without this, I would not turn my back upon you."

Horatia shook her head violently, the button dove chirping at its creators' palpable distress.

"But what of Lucrezia, Joffre and Juan? They will look upon me and see a devi-"

Cesare cut her off.

"Juan will find this whole thing hilarious, as he does with most things, and Lucrezia will ask you for a thousand dresses while Joffre will be in awe. Nothing more. Now come, let's get you back inside to rest and eat. You must be hungry."

The dark circles, the heated skin, the tremble to her hand, she was still ill, hurt, and Cesare would guess, this specialness, exerted some energy from her. Energy she needed to use to heal. Furthermore, Cesare needed time to… Acclimatize himself fully to this sudden truth and, well, do what he did best. Plan. There was no doubt in his heart that their father, Rodrigo, knew about Horatia already. That is what he meant, back then, when Horatia had first awoken, by saying they, as a family, were stronger now. Of course their father was going to use Horatia's abilities to his own ends, his own goals, but exactly how he would do that, and what it meant to Horatia herself, left Cesare worried.

Her abilities, as astounding as they were, meant she was, in a way, left out in the open. No one could know. Not a soul. The church, the jealousy from rival families, the fear of the peasantry… No. She needed protection, not an opportunistic father looking to push his own agenda, even if in his own heart, Rodrigo believed all his scheming was best for all involved.

"I don't need your protection, Cesare. I've managed well enough all these years."

Cesare gave one last stroke to the button-dove before letting his hand fall, cocking a quizzical brow at Horatia.

"Are you in my mind?"

Horatia smiled at him as she placed the bird onto her shoulder, letting it perch there contentedly.

"No, I wouldn't do that without permission, but your face is open for all to see."

Open. What a strange word. Bizarre for him, at best. No one had called him open before, or associated him to anything loosely resembling such a thing, since he was a small boy. Perhaps, as clearly as he could see her, her for her, she could see him as clearly too, and that similarly frightened him as it did delight him.

She tried to take a step down the sloping path, where their little villa could be seen glinting in the rising sun, but her foot shook, and her knee buckled. Cesare's hand snapped out and grabbed her by the elbow, barely managing to balance her before she fell completely to the floor. The cardinal robe flapped open at the sudden movement, and there, stark against the white shift, was a spot of blood over her stomach. She must have pulled a stitch free when she threw the dove into the air.

She tried to pull her arm free to right herself, but Cesare was already moving it cross her back, bending down, sweeping her legs out and picking her up. The dove hopped up onto his own shoulder as Horatia yelped and grumbled at the abrupt jostle, protesting for being _put back down right that instant or so help her_ … Cesare laughed as he began the trek back to their villa.

"You may not need protection, but we are family. Family sticks together. You're one of us. You are _my_ sister. The one who likes honey, the one who giggles at nothing but the wind, the one who liked to be hummed to sleep. That has not changed."

She stopped her protesting and scrabbling to get back down and looked at him. Observed him. Behold him from his widows' peek to the scruff lining his cheeks and lips. Slowly, her head fell to the side, resting against his shoulder, and still, she silently considered him in serene perplexity.

"I think I want to change my word."

She felt so light in his arms that he was sure, if he were to loosen his grip, god himself would blow the wind and take her back to the heavenly kingdom.

"And what would it be if not solitary?"

From the corner of his eye, he watched as she nestled in against the indulgent velvet of his bishop robes, eyes slinking shut as a smile, like she had trapped moonlight in the very curve of her lips, or the stars had toppled down from the sky and made a home right there on her face, to light up even the darkest of times, ignited. She had the kind of smile that made you happy, for inexplicable, unknown reasons, a smile that made you feel just that little bit more human.

"Unison."

Cesare grinned and tugged her closer as he headed to their vill-… To their _home._

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 **So, do you like it? Was this a good rendition of Cesare, or did I completely miss the mark and maybe, likely, created the worst depiction of him yet? XD**

 _So, Cesare won the little vote on who you guys wanted to see next in P.O.V form. I hope I did him, and your expectations, justice! Let me know who you would like to see next, out of anyone, Horatia, Juan, Joffre, Rodrigo, Vannozza and Lucrezia (Cesare's just had a chapter, so we'll leave him out of the vote for the next one.)_

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 **Notes on this chapter:**

1\. The quote that opens this chapter is from Machiavelli's prince which, notoriously, was rumoured to be based on Cesare Borgia. I couldn't not start of Cesare's P.O.V without quoting a book apparently written about him by a contemporary fellow XD. The temptation was too strong.

2\. I really wanted to have no one mention the words Magic or Witch, yet. I've done this because, well, in my eyes, there's going to be a deep-set tension for those two words. Horatia wouldn't use them, as of yet, because she knows she's in the past, she knows what sort of reaction those words brought out of people (witch burnings), and even though she's showing them what she is, quite dramatically (eh, she's a bit of a drama queen, but she is a Borgia after all XD) she isn't broaching those words because, really, she knows this will be hard for them to accept as it is at its core without adding religious zealotry and linguistic negative connotations to the equation. In short, she's trying not to completely push them over the edge XD. I haven't had Cesare or anyone else use those words, especially Cesare after what he just witnessed, because I don't think he is ready yet. Oh, he knows exactly what Horatia is, knows magic and witches, but, the way I see it, it is one thing knowing something and another thing vocalizing it and I really don't think he was ready to start verbally confirming his sister is a witch. They have after all, grown up in renaissance church life and that sort of stigma, especially stamped into people so young as it was, is hard to overcome. I'm not saying Cesare, or any of the Borgia's, will fear or hate what Horatia is on religious grounds, but I do think they would try and rationalize it off as something else, like divine inspiration or a godly touch, rather then going, yuuuup, she a witch!

3\. Having Cesare meet and talk to Horatia in a vineyard was purposefully done. Keeping in line with my Greek theme, I took inspiration from a Roman version this time, that of Bacchus, who was the god of wine and fertility. Linking Horatia to Bacchus, especially through Cesare's eyes, just seemed right to me. Often displayed as a youthful adolescent, (Cesare's continued reference to her youth and vitality) he is frequently painted enjoying (too much) of the sweet stuff (Horatias own agreement that she enjoys honey and the sweeter things). He's usually depicted with grape vines in his hair (Them speaking in a vineyard) and a rather drunken grin as he wreaks mischief and madness on the lives of men. (Horatia is a magical being, Cesare hinting that her eyes reminded him of madness). Wine was also instrumentally important to Italians back in the renaissance and had a lot of cultural, social and intellectual symbolism. Not only was it good for the economy, but it was almost religious in a way. Wine, at that time, represents the suffering of Christ as Jesus offered wine on the last supper to the apostles, (Horatia, when Cesare first sees her, is happily munching down some grapes, hopefully pinning down Cesare's view that she is otherworldly) and holds deep ecclesiastical ties, sowing in the religious underlying meaning into this fic. Wine was also seen as a potent fertility component, along with Bacchus himself being the god of fertility, It was why I used words like ripe, quickened and bountiful. It all implies womanly beauty, and as womanly beauty was seen back then, to fertility. As with Juan and Horatia, I wanted the inappropriate message, that of incest, to be there from the very beginning, but not in your face, but subtle, between the lines, so, at first glance, it seems innocent enough… A lot like Bacchus himself, actually.

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 **A HUGE THANK YOU** for everyone who followed, favourited and reviewed! This whopping 8k chapter is for you guys and I really do wish that you've enjoyed it!

 _ **As always, drop a review if you have a spare moment. They keep the fingers typing ;)**_


	4. Chapter 4

_**Subiaco, Italy; 1492**_

 _ **Rodrigo's P.O.V**_

Rodrigo Borgia _adored_ his children. In all his sixty-and-one years upon this green earth, if all could be said of him was thus, he would be die happy. Given, he was a man of many virtues and vices, each playing their motivational characteristics in his life, even so, his family, his children, always came first. Cunning. Intelligent. Ambitious. Duplicitous. Diplomatic. Cutthroat. Charismatic. Pitiless. Strategic. All names freely given to him. All labels that, even the ones that stung, were apt in their description of his character. He was, after all, human, and humans had proved time and time again to be the most complex beasts created by divinity. He only furthered that philosophy a level... Or two.

Yet, even his enemies, as numerous as they were becoming these days, the list now weighing heavy on his shoulders, those who only saw the worst in him would readily admit he loved his family beyond measure, and sometimes, logic. Even Cardinal Orsini, with his snide comments on Rodrigo's Spanish blood and curled lip had remarked more than once on Rodrigo's extensive love for his family. Although, that was usually followed by a derisive commentary how it was almost indecent of him to show such earthly affections. The irony was, of course, the Cardinal had seven bastards of his own lurking in the shadows, his cowardice too rampant to push the man to be anything more than a kindly 'uncle' to the public. Still, the fact remained true. There was nothing Rodrigo wouldn't do, no far off land he would not tread bare foot, no boiling pot of wine he would not dip his hand in, if his children so needed him to.

Yes, he could be a harsh man, predominantly so to his sons, but, after all, this was a harsh world they lived in. Rome was a city of dog fights, familial feuds spanning decades, corrupted politics, murder, hegemony, slander, the place where one day a man of humble origins could make his fortune, and promptly lose it all and his life on the next morn by a careless flap of words to the wrong ear. His children needed to be ready for such a place, the underhanded games and false courtesies, if they were to ever survive and prosper.

That is why, even with their youngest daughter recently returned and still mending, Rodrigo could not stall going back to Rome for much longer. The Pope was dying. There was no escaping this lone fact, and once he rattled his last breath, the void that this mortal body would leave in the most holy church would create a vacuum that would threaten to devour them whole if he, Rodrigo, did not act. In short, his families entire future depended on those actions and deeds he undertook in the next measly few weeks. For better or for worst. For glory or gore. It rested on his shoulders. One wrong move and everything, from this house to their very lives, could be at stake if he so much as took a wrong step. No wonder sleep had been evading him so casually since the last full moon.

The Borgia's were from Spanish descent, originally hailing from the kingdom of Valencia, but they did not live in Spain. Their branch of the great Borgia tree lived in Subiaco, in the grand papal states, and these Italian men did not let them forget they, even if his children had been born right here, in this very house, were never, and would never be one of them. Even now, he caught some nobles biting their thumb at his back, whispering under sweet breath of his ancestry. If the dust of being a Spanish outsider was not enough to dirty their visage upon greetings, the rumours of their Marrano ancestry surely did. Ancestors of roaming Jews, and he, a Cardinal with the Popes crown glittering in his eye, was a fascinating, if not predictable, scandal cooked up by the circling Cardinals who too had set their gazes to the white robes, wishing to discredit his standing.

Nonetheless, Rodrigo feared they would not stop there, at conjuring petty stories to hasten suspicion and scorn. Over the next month, as the Holy Father slowly passed into the hallowed land, the college of Cardinals would bid, blackmail, slander and, perhaps, murder their way to the chair of St Peter. Now, if Della Rovere, with his favour at the French court, was to win at the conclave…

Oh, while his enemies had gotten their Marrano ancestry grievously mistaken, they had not done the same for the ambitious glint in his eye. He _was_ vying for the white robes. Really, who could blame him? Their family, the Borgia, had no nobility to fall back on, no blue blood, no ties to foreign kings or duchies. Their claim to wealth and standing, and therefore security, was of an ecclesiastical nature. Clerics, Cardinals and Popes made up the figureheads on their family tapestry. If they were to be cut off from the holy church, excommunicated or exiled, it would be the end of their name, of their fortune, both fiscal and spiritual, their home, their safety. If Della Rovere or another who wished him ill, and therefore his family ill will, were to sit upon that chair by this years end, it could very well mean the end of all. Of his _family._ Rodrigo couldn't let that pass.

It was the security of being Pope Rodrigo was after more than the jewels and ducats… Mostly. He would admit, the financial gain was a bonus all of its own, one he wouldn't snub his nose at. Yet, as Pope, he could secure his children... His _bastard_ children's standing, secure good titles for his sons, profitable offices and holdings, a well named husband for Lucrezia, with grand estates and vaults that would leave her asking for nothing and, all this, he would not be able to gain without locking the papacy in his name.

As simple bastard children to a Cardinal, their marriage prospects were poor, left to second or third cousins of secondary families. The options of offices to old were limited to clerical natures, and even then, they would need good patronage to push them to the higher rungs. Patronage unlikely and not freely given. Yet, as Pope, as the Holy Father of Christendom, all doors were open to them, no place or seat to high, no name out of reach. For once, the Borgia's could sit at the very top of civilization and want for nothing. Furthermore, as Pope, his enemies, and therefore his families enemies, would be haltered in their actions, their blows lessoned and slowed, restricted. If he won at the conclave once the current Pope died, they would finally be protected in their lives. As a father, he could do or wish for no more.

And when the time came and he too passed as all men must, with Cesare in the church, so much like him that most days it was frightening to behold such a spectre of oneself, Cesare would climb the ladder of clerics and Cardinals like he had and, perhaps if god was in their favour, one day don the same crown and pure robes Rodrigo had and further solidify their legacy. Through him, and later Cesare, their family would be untouchable.

 _If he made it to the Vatican in time._

He could do none of this if he was not present for the Popes death, if he was not in conclave to win the majority vote, if he was not there to stop Della Rovere Or Orsini from buying confidence and popularity, if he was all the way in Subiaco, listening in the side-lines through birds that took weeks to bring word. Vannozza, his lovely dove, agreed heartily. Cesare, however, was proving more difficult.

"She is still injured father!"

Cesare argued a further fifteenth time as he paced across the carpeted floor of Rodrigo's study. At least his son had taken time to wash and dress before he accosted him this morning. Gone were his sublime robes of black Venetian silk and Naplesian purple velvet, replaced by leather breeches, sturdy boot, and finely trimmed doublet. Still, his dark son preferred his shades in black, and with the sun shining as brightly as it was, he looked almost ominous and dreary in his onyx outfit. He looked as gloomy as Rodrigo felt.

Rodrigo wilted back into his chair, running a tired hand across his sore eyes. They had been having this exact argument for the last hour. Ever since Cesare had come stumbling through the main entrance last morning, Horatia in his arms, the pair finding a frantic Vannozza and Rodrigo searching the house once they had awoken and found her bed empty, Cesare had not let up on his demands to halt their move to Rome. Vannozza had promptly taken the pale looking girl back to her bed chamber, to wash and rest, away from arguing son and father, but for that short while, searching, even Rodrigo had been sure that, once again, they had lost her anew.

Harshly stamping down upon the pit of fear nibbling on his gut at the memory, Rodrigo resituated himself in his chair behind his writing desk, letters and scrolls messily strewn over its face. It was a mess, and so characteristically out of place for him. Perhaps he was still not quite over the fright his oldest son and youngest daughter had graciously given him the day before. It had not come to pass. She had not been taken again. She had simply been in the vine grove, exploring as the young were oft to do. So, why would the fear that had squeezed his heart not fade? Tiredly, he addressed the increasingly irate Cesare.

"And if there was another way, Cesare, I would take it. However, I need to be at the Vatican shortly."

There was no other way. Now more than ever, with Horatia returned, with _what_ she was, they _needed_ the safety the papacy could offer their family. Nonetheless, as he was prone to do, Cesare continued to pluck and prod and argue. Cesare halted right in front of his desk, crossing arms over broad chest, staring straight and true like an arrow, unmovable, resolute. Rodrigo could feel the twangs of a headache thrumming at his temple.

"Then we shall stay here and meet you in Rome when Horatia is fully recovered."

Sighing for what felt like the hundredth time, Rodrigo pushed up from his desk, feeling the joints in his knees ache their disapproval at the sudden movement. He was becoming old. Withered. He still had many years in him still, but age was slinking at his heels, snapping at his toes. He wasn't the young, robust man he had been before. And he, like all, would not be in this world forever. In his place, however, he did wish to leave behind some form of legacy. For his children, their children, for theirs too. The Borgia name would be remembered.

Rodrigo came to the front of his son and, idly, he wondered exactly when it was the boy had been able to stare him eye to eye. Then again, boy was wrong, wasn't it? His son was a man now. A tall man who looked so much like his mother, dark and brooding like his grandfather, but detestably had too much of his father in him. Too much Rodrigo. Cesare was a man now, a man that needed to do his part for their family. It hurt, Rodrigo knew it did, but as Rodrigo had to follow his fathers footsteps, and his before his, Cesare would have to do the same. Even if it was not what he wished to do. It was the hefty burden of the first-born. _The family comes first._ Rodrigo's grandfather had told his father that, a saying his father had passed to him, one he was currently trying to instill in his children.

"You know we cannot do this. To win this, I need all of you by my side. I need your and Juan's help."

He truly did. When the Pope died and Rodrigo was sequestered to the conclave for the vote, he would be cut off from the outside world. Away from his vaults. His wealth. The people who needed buying over. The secrets that needed finding. There was no way he could be in conclave _and_ outside the Vatican, doing what needed to be done to ensure he won the vote, but there was a way to get word in and out of the conclave, and that is where his sons came into play. While he played politics in the holy church, garnering Cardinal support, his sons in the outside could ensure his promises given in conclave would be followed through. He had spent years, decades, waiting for this day to come, and so close, tantalizingly close, he couldn't divert his plans. He reached out for Cesare but he took a step back. Rodrigo almost laughed. He had done the very same many a time to his father and, only now, with the tables turned, did he realize how much it must have hurt the man.

"Then me and Juan will accompany you. Mother, Lucrezia and Horatia can stay until such a time comes when they can travel safely."

Rodrigo couldn't help it, he did laugh. It was brittle, incredulous, as he swept a crimson robed arm theatrical around him, his voice rising in pitch to almost indignation.

"And leave them here, unguarded? When the election takes place? When Rome falls to anarchy? Out in the open? Where Cardinals and Bishops will be looking for weakness's to exploit? I did not think you so naïve, Cesare."

If Rodrigo left his family here, even in part, especially his mistress or daughters without the protection of he and his sons, they would be moved against. If his daughters were to take a blow, for him, for his plans… No. They wouldn't. They would come to Rome. Be safe. Cared for. Watched. Cesare should know all this by now, or, in the face that he didn't, Rodrigo needed to teach him the savage, deceitful nature of the underbelly of the church. Still, Cesare's face became stone, carven, his lip curling just so in the very corner, a twitch really, but Rodrigo knew the look well. He wore it himself many a times, when the game of chess they called life left a rook or knight out in the open for him to knock down. The sight of it sickened him slightly, tugged at his intestines and Rodrigo's gaze darted away from the reflection of himself. Cesare was too much like him. Too much. And he… Rodrigo was _not_ a good man.

"I am not so naïve as to believe you only want Horatia close to keep an eye on her and her comfort. Do not think me stupid, father."

Slick, like olive oil slipping over honey, sweet but rotten. That's what Cesare's voice, right there, reminded him of. A polished dagger. Again, Rodrigo's stomach roiled. Slowly, Rodrigo edged closer, coming to Cesare's side, leaning in close. This time, Cesare didn't shirk out from under Rodrigo's hand upon his shoulder.

"You know what she is capable of."

It was more statement than question, that which tumbled past his thinning lips. Horatia must have shown Cesare in the vine groves. Why? Well, where Cesare had proven to be like he, Horatia, from the short time he had been reacquainted with his daughter, had proven to be as equally like her mother, even if she took after him in looks. Stubborn. Proud. Defiant… A dreadful liar. In truth, it had proved harder to keep Horatia bed bound than it had keeping her siblings away so she could rest. And that, in and of itself, said enough of her tenacity. She never meant to cause harm, Rodrigo knew that well enough, but she was curious, wide-eyed and intelligent, thirsty to know the world around her. Rodrigo only feared what the world would do to her once _it_ knew _her_.

When she had first came, broken and frail, after her brothers and sister had been ushered out of the room, when questioned of where she had been, she had not even bothered to _try_ and lie. She had spoken her truth. Brutally. Without extravagance or exaggeration, without flare or dramatics, but with a keen factual voice, devoid of emotion that, in light of the results, made her story all the more cutting and tragic.

Immortality, death, war, prophecies… He, back then, would not have believed such a tale if it weren't coming from such an open, honest and, really, underneath the stoic face, scared girl. So young. Too young. _His_ young daughter. She was hurting, deeply, fresh and old wounds festering, and yet, she bared herself for them, to ease their own fears, their unknowns, because, in her eyes, there was no way forward without truth being the core of it all. It was for this reason, her openness, her strange habit of putting others comforts and feelings above her own, that Rodrigo knew, beyond doubt, that Rome, without them to guide her across the chessboard, would eat her alive. Cesare nodded.

"Yes."

So, she likely saw Cesare, and as she had with Rodrigo and Vannozza, even questioned but once, she had spilled all in hopes that the truth would build bridges between them. Perhaps it had, with Cesare's stout refusal to move or let Horatia be moved before she was fully healed. Rodrigo pulled back, lent back onto the edge of his immense desk and crossed his own arms over his chest.

"And you think I wish to use this to further my advancement in the church."

Finally, Cesare's own stoic mask broke completely as he came to a flurry of life, teeth glinting in the bright sun filtering in from the large bay windows, hands gesturing widely, eyebrow imperially cocking.

"How could I not? Her… Talents will prove useful in the upcoming conclave. I know you enough to know you won't let this opportunity pass without a glance. You are going to use her gifts to push your own agenda when she _should_ be healing."

Rodrigo, like little Horatia, would not lie. Not to his family. Perhaps, in a way, she was like him too.

"I will."

Cesare flushed hotly, teeth clenching, nostrils flaring, a little muscle in his jaw spasming before he went to speak, but Rodrigo cut the storm off before it could break on the horizon. It took a lot for Cesare to lose his temper completely, but when he did, Rodrigo was sure the gates of hell themselves cracked open and inch.

"But only in matters where it will not lead to any danger to herself, her sister, or us. Do you not see Cesare? I am doing this for her safety too. If the church were to ever find out, if they were to look for such a person, where would they search?"

It took a moment for the question to really settle in Cesare's mind, fogging his temper to cindering smoke, as a little glint sparked in his dark eye. More aptly, Rodrigo's real question, the one left unspoken, was contrary. _Where wouldn't they search?_ The answer was obvious, brilliant and, in his humble opinion, the perfect cover. Cesare echoed his fathers thoughts.

"They would never suspect someone like Horatia would be near the church, let alone within it. They wouldn't even dare think it… With you as Pope, the Vatican is the safest place she can be."

Rodrigo clicked, as if he was extinguishing a dying candle, and pulled away from the table, stepping closer to his son all over again.

"Exactly. I do this for us. I do this for our family. I do this for you, Juan, Joffre, Lucrezia and Horatia."

And like that fading candle made from cheap tallow, the kind that drizzled and fizzled and stank of rancid fat, Cesare wasn't ready to relinquish the last spluttering flame of ire, not without one more spit of waning ember spark.

"And when it is time for Horatia to marry? What happens when her in-laws discover she is not as she seems? Or are we to believe she will have to hide what she is for the rest of her life?"

Horatia couldn't marry. That power, her abilities, in another house? Especially with how fast these Italian families turned upon themselves? Dogs biting off their own tails and paws? No. It was too dangerous. For her and for them. Furthermore, the thought of it, perhaps because he had only just got her back, sending her away so soon, left bile stinging the back of his throat. No. His daughters were not leaving him so soon. Not yet. And when the time came… When the time came.

"A bridge we will cross when the time comes. We can protect her, but we cannot hide her away forever Cesare. She will need to venture out. Look at last morn, where she wandered out into the vines groves unaccompanied. Horatia, I believe, is not someone who prospers in a cage. No matter how gilded you make it. However, we must protect her. She is hurt, new to this way of life, and too honest and open to make it here alone. Rome will rip her apart. So, we must teach her how to survive in this place. It is all new to her. So very new… Help your sister, Cesare. If you try and lock her away fully, she will only resent you for it. Teach her, do not cage her son."

Cesare's eyes slipped shut as he took a deep breath in. As they opened, staring dauntingly into his own, Cesare's shoulders sagged an inch and finally, Rodrigo knew he had gotten his son to see the wider portrait being painted by gods divine hand.

"Two weeks. Give her at least another two weeks to heal, father."

Rodrigo smiled and nodded. A fortnight was cutting it close, but doable.

"Two weeks and then we _must_ depart for Rome."

Whatever Cesare would say next would forever be lost as the polished door to his private study was knocked upon three times, before being opened cautiously, the covered head of a scullery maid peaking through, eyes downcast.

"Afternoon meal will be ready within the hour, your eminence."

Rodrigo brightened considerably.

"Good. Horatia will be bathed and ready by then and likely be led to the dinner hall by your mother. Come, let's take a walk before we go collect Juan, Lucrezia and Joffre and, today, we shall eat as a family."

* * *

 **So, what do you think?**

 **A.N:** I know it's been a long while since I updated, but Rodrigo was a right bastard in getting right, University has been rather hectic lately, and honestly, inspiration took a little vacation without giving me any notice. I know this chapter is relatively short compared to the previous ones, but I wanted to gently slide back in, as well as keeping Rodrigo's P.O.V shorter so I could start pinning his character down because, damn, he is one complex boy! Nevertheless, inspiration came back and well, we have this? Good? Bad? Who knows! I hope you all liked the little dip we took into our favourite Popes mind, and as with Cesare, I didn't massacre him completely.

That being said, from now on, I'm only going to be going around three points of view. That is **Horatia, Juan and Cesare's.** This is because, in my eyes, it makes the narrative stronger and flow better, without hopping from seven characters, while also keeping those characters in frame through the fic. So, once again, I ask you lovely people **who do you wish to see next, Juan, Horatia or Cesare?**

As for this chapter itself, there was no mythology incorporated, but I did take a bit of inspiration from the Godfather, with all the legacy bits and pieces. The Borgia's, after all, are known as Italy's first crime family, and I thought it fit with Rodrigo best. As for Rodrigo, while the man was many things, even in contemporary records written by those who wished to slander the man and his family, his love for his children was never disputed. Even now, when historians delve into the Borgia's and Rodrigo, it's his love for his children that most concludes led him to his choices, for better and for worst. I hope that came through in this chapter, and, well, you all liked it.

For those missing our darling Lucrezia, fear not, she's coming. (Can you tell I love this girl?) All that being out of the way, I hoped you enjoyed this snippet, look forward to those to come, and if you have a moment, **drop a review!** They really do help keeping me motivated and smiling. Until next time, I hope you enjoyed this!


	5. Chapter 5

_Vatican City, 1492:_

No one's P.O.V

He was drifting. Floating. A feather caught in the summer breeze that gently rocked him back and forth. The wine thrumming through his veins was keeping him flying. High. Half mindless. Half gone. Clasped in a euphoric drunken haze. Too much wine. Too much hot blood. Too much. Not enough. The thighs around his hips constricted, the heavy hand sweeping over shoulder blade to claw, the sharp mewl blowing tender encouragement around the shell of his ear.

His breath was coming hot now, fast, thrusting. The world was swimming around him, the dim candles obscuring form and shape to massless shadows, swirling, dancing, just like how _she_ danced, and all he could feel was the hands digging into his muscled back, the flutter of silk sheets around his waist, the frantic strum of his heart as sweat tickled and trickled down his neck, soaking his hair, the blissful tightening of the body underneath him. Oh, but when he closed his eyes the world burst to vivid, terrifying life. He'll burn for this, scorch and cinder in Dante's inferno, but while it lasts he was soaring in heaven on the wings of Icarus.

On his eyelids he could see _her_ , the pale slope of her shoulder and neck glistening in the sun as they quaked, laughing in yellow and gold as she darted across the palazzo, grass tickling her toes as she dipped and dived, chasing after a giggling Joffre. He could see the easy flush of her cheeks and lips, lush and swollen, the heaving of her bosom as Lucrezia led her through the steps of the dance once more. He could see her thin, long fingers, fragile, twisting around a page, flicking through a book with a swift twist to her equally slight wrist as those plump lips muttered the words back to the old book of Latin verse, their father sitting beside her, coaching her through the harder Italian translations. He could hear her laughter, the high bell ringing in mass, as their mother twisted and braided her full, riotous hair from her face. He could see and feel the heat of her eyes, scorching and deep, heavy, so heavy, glittering as she stared out of the litter, wonderstruck, to the great city of Rome as they finally made the journey through the dusty, crowded streets to the Borgia apartments near the Vatican, before finally turning her gaze to him, so wide-eyed and joyful.

And if he was high enough, if he flew closer to the sun, drifted higher and higher until he felt like his skin was crisping, he could _feel_ it all. The body beneath him shrank, thinning, softening. The caramel skin bleached itself to marble, the shift of her shoulder and neck becoming slender, swan-like, as one of his hands slithered up, wrapping, thumb stroking twanging pulse. The breasts straining against his chest became smaller, perkier. The lips trailing his jaw became velvet, plush. The fingers clawing at his back softened, fluttered not scratched, almost hesitant, delicate as they slowly danced across his sweating flesh, nimbly winding in his hair at the base of his neck. The mewling in his ear became less shrill, huskier, darker, little groans of delight like sucking honey off from fingertips. His free hand was no longer tangled in golden waves, but lost in a mass of onyx curls, coiling, trapping, devouring. And those eyes, sweet Madonna Maria, those eyes. They were no longer amber, sharp and knowledgeable, but bright, so bright and green, so full of life and innocence and sweet, sweet wonder. And they were looking at him… Him, wide and warm and naive and…

It hit him like a roar of thunder, his breath faltering, breaking in his throat like a lapping tide as his hips jerked and stuttered, his hand tightened around her throat, his own dusky groan of fulfilment breached the dark night as he spilled himself into the arching body beneath him. _Her_ name came tumbling from his lips like a perverse prayer laid at a demolished alter. The piercing cry of the woman beneath him brought reality tumbling back upon his head. The woman became blonde again, cunning, long legged and plump. Perfectly beautiful. Perfectly brazen. Perfectly _not_ her.

Her features became dulled, sharpness lost to only the ghosts of his memories. Her voice became something practiced, castoff and excessive, not easy and gentle, fresh and innocent. She smelled of the flour and copper pans she worked with down in the kitchens, not sweet honey and ripening berries. His stomach roiled as she giggled, reaching for his face.

"Get out."

The scullery maid giggled once more, still so sure the game was carrying on. He's frail temper snapped, at himself, at her, at this night, his mind. When she reached for his face again, he batted the limb away and snarled.

"Get. Out."

Her legs unravelled themselves from his waist.

"I can be whoever you wish. I can be this Hora-"

She punctuated the broken name with a roll of her hips. It was too late. Any passion, any heat left in his shaking body was nothing but cold ice, a blanket of snow freezing him to impotency. _Not her. Not her. Not her._ It wasn't _her_ beneath him and that was the problem. He's stomach clamped tightly, the name he had called out mockingly ringing in the back of his mind, as he heaved himself off the bed, knees weak and trembling, unsure, bile and vomit burning his throat. Perhaps that was just the copious amount of wine he had indulge in this night. Still, his heart hammered, his guts wriggled and the floor beneath his feet had never felt so wobbly as he reached down, plucked the maid up by her elbow and yanked her free from the prison of rich sheets and blankets, shoving her towards the door.

"Get out now!"

Thankfully, the nameless woman took hardly any time in shirking on her shift and grease stained dress as he made his way to his dresser, pouring himself another glass of wine. It would take more than wine to clean his soul. His hand violently shook as he downed the liquid in one swift chug.

"You know where to find me again. I will be waiting."

The maid said right before she ducked out of his chamber. The shatter of his glass against the door moments later was the only thing that met her taunting offer. Sick. He was sick. So very, very, very sick. A beast. Vile. There were demons in his head, in his heart, in his very soul. No confession could save him now… For he didn't truly want to be saved. Not if he could have but one more twisted fantasy. Just one more taste of the forbidden fruit. Always one more.

The worst was that there was no definitive moment, no epiphany, no singular action that had led to this… This depravity. It was like he was stuck in quick sand, struggling, flailing, but only ever digging himself further down, burying his soul in the murk and mud of this insanity. There was a special place in hell just for him. No. Not just for him. This wasn't his fault. It couldn't be. Even he, a Borgia, was not this debauched. Besides him, in hell, his brother would sit too. Or burn. They both deserved just that. Oh, Madonna Maria forgive him… Forgive him…

He needed to see her. Just to check. The night was dark and quiet. Too silent. Rome was a cesspool of Italian dogs and plots. Just a quick glimpse. One look could not hurt? Drunkenly, he stumbled for his breeches and shirts, hopping and staggering as he pulled and yanked the clothes on. The candles flickered as the oaken door slammed shut behind him. Father in heaven, forgive him his sins and lead him not into temptation, but deliver him from evil…

* * *

 ** _Four Weeks ago:_**

 _Subiaco, Italy, 1492:_

 _Horatia's P.O.V_

The sun was gentle that day, soft, catching, lazy. Like a fat kitchen cat reclining on the window sill after eating its fill of mice. It couldn't be more contrary to the Borgia household which had been in a flurry of movement and life since the break of dawn. Pox marked servants ran back and forth across the palazzo, huffing and cursing in thick Italian, carting crates, chests and boxes onto ox and horse driven carts. Young stable boys shackled and dressed the horses, donning the recognisable mulberry and yellow livery of the Borgia Bull, idly chatting between themselves before their master ushered them back to work with a glower and a cuff to the back of their heads. While the scullery maids prepared the food and drink in the large litter that would, once the family assembled in the palazzo, transport their little gathering to the famed and most holy city of Rome. Horatia scoffed deeply in the back of her throat with a wry sense of humour. How holy could and would this city be when she, a bloody witch, began to walk its sanctified halls? Would it be she or the church which would burst into flames when she was forced to attend mass?

It was strange, Horatia would admit, to see the Subiaco estate in such… Desolation. The furniture and paintings had been transported days prior to their own journey, the private library being the first of many rooms cleared much to Horatia's displeasure, and as the house began to slowly hollow itself out, Horatia had began to feel as if she was… Drifting. Yes, drifting. This house, the white walls and terracotta slates, the ornate paintings and polished woods was, for the last three weeks, all she had known. Before that it had been war, blood, death, screams and fire. Tom Riddle with his sick grin. Sirius falling through the veil. The sickening roll of Cedric's body before he was left staring listlessly up at the sky. Dobby dying in her arms. Cold and hungry in the under stairs cupboard.

This little villa, with its hot sun and sweeping vine groves felt like paradise compared to everything before. A part of herself hated herself for this. Even with Ron and Hermione, even with her fondest memories, nothing really compared to the peace she had accidentally discovered here, in this strange villa nearly five hundred years in the fuckin' past. Even stabbed, as she was, this little villa had been her Eden for a time. The Borgia's… Her family had proven to be angels, if she was so inclined to believe in such beings. They made her smile, laugh, forget the pain and horrors from before, even but for a moment or two. Vannozza, so warm, so full of fiery life, who helped her braid her rebellious hair, she would smile at her so brightly, hum to her Catalan songs, hymns from her homeland, her accent thick and husky, when Horatia's wound, in the beginning week, proved to be too painful for her to even get out of bed, dipping cloths soaked in scented oils and cool water across her sweaty brow.

Rodrigo and his mind, who would sit beside her for hours, when her strength began to come back to her, passing books and scrolls as he helped her learn, helped distract her from the flaring pain of the knotting flesh of her stomach. Horatia liked the way he grinned at her, the dimple on the left side of his mouth when she spoke a sentence in Italian or Latin correctly, or how he barrelled laughed when she sniped or groaned in that dry way of hers, the way he ruffled her hair or flicked her nose when he too was feeling joyous and free and unrestrained by life's heavy burdens.

And her siblings where a matter all of their own. After that first meal, where Rodrigo had sent the servants away, came clean about exactly who, and more importantly, _what_ their sister was, swore the rest to secrecy, they had seemingly come at her full force, unafraid, unaccusatory. Horatia wouldn't lie, she had thought, truly believed once they knew, really knew, they would have gotten a stake ready, kindling fire already burning beneath the pile of wood they would gather. And yet, not one of them had flinched. Not one had crossed themselves and prayed. Not one ran from the room screaming. In full honesty, Horatia had originally believed they were trying to lull her into a false sense of security, readying to jump her when she least expected it. She had been cold, almost detached in those first few tender days when the truth had come out into the light of day, so sure she was seconds away from being booted out or killed. Joffre had been the first to win her over completely, to ease her frayed paranoia.

He was so young, a shy little thing, tender and gentle spoken. He came to her room most afternoons, shuffling his boots, bearing games of dice or cards. He softly asked her questions, begged for a tale or two from her life before and slowly, Horatia began to weave stories to splendour the boy. He smiled so brilliantly after all. The story of the large castle in the wintry and windy highlands. The tale of a horse with an eagle head that flew over crystal lakes and into fluffy clouds. The account of vaults filled to the brim with gold and jewels, so high the piles nearly touched the ceilings. She only ever told him the good ones, couldn't bare to bring herself to the darker moments, to taint him with such depravity, and even if those good stories were few and far between, for a little while, both she and Joffre were relishing in the pleasant world she painted with her words, even if that world was lacking all that had made it truly real for herself.

She liked the way he would laugh so openly, unafraid. She liked the way, after one long winded tale, he would curl up into her side on the bed, having fallen asleep, still clutching the deck of cards. She liked the way, with Joffre, she could pretend there had only ever been good memories from before. He had an innocence Horatia had never gotten to have and, by Merlin himself, Horatia would make sure the young boy would keep it for many more years.

Lucrezia and her tenacity was the one to ease Horatia's utter fear of rejection. The blonde was stubborn, resolute and so magnificently innocent it was hard to be anything but glad to see her light and beaming face. At night, Lucrezia would sneak into her room, lay beside her, rattle on about this or that, or if Horatia had already fallen asleep, simply slumber next to her, the two awakening in the morning to Vannozza gently shuffling them around. Lucrezia brought her lemon water and candied fruits, peaches dipped in cinnamon and oranges brazed in treacle, even when the physician had ordered Horatia to a strict diet of watery broths and starchy wine. When Horatia began to be able to move around freely again, the true games began. Lucrezia dared her on, goaded her, the two becoming thick partners in crime. They broke into Rodrigo's private wine cellar, just to see if they could nab his vintage bottles. It was Lucrezia's idea to sneak into Cesare's room and magically shrink his clothing a size down, the two chuckling as he glowered and huffed as all his clothes ripped at the seams, before he clocked onto their game and chased them around the foyer after catching Horatia with her wand out and Lucrezia holding up his favourite doublet. Of course, it was Horatia's idea to spell Juan's rooms a lurid pink, but Lucrezia's cry of delight when she heard Juan swearing when he found his chambers in such a mess was well worth the run it took to escape a grinning Juan when he spotted the two hiding in the closet.

She liked the way she didn't have to hide with Lucrezia. Not one part of herself. Horatia was sure she could tell Lucrezia the darkest, dankest secrets hidden in the pit of her soul, being a Horcrux, dying, killing Tom Riddle, and the blonde would only ever look at her and see Horatia. Not the girl-who-lived, not the chosen one, not a savoir or slayer, but Horatia, her sister, her twin. It was the first time someone had looked at her and really seen her for herself and, well, Horatia relished in it. She was a witch and that… That was okay. No one here was going to beat her for it, or lock her in a cupboard, or starve her like Vernon and Petunia.

It was Juan who made Horatia happy to be in this time. In the beginning, everything had been confusing. No showers. No cars. No phones. Even the soap was strange and weird. He guided her through it with an easy charisma. When she couldn't figure out how to get her shoes on, the buckles far different to the laces and zips she was used to, he would bend down and slide the slipper onto her foot, deftly tying the buckle with a quick quip about finding her some buckle-less boots if she was to take so long in the future, a cheeky grin dimpling his face. When she didn't understand what fork or spoon to use at the dinner table, there were so fuckin' many of them, he would slyly nod to the one she was supposed to be using, or even switch to the wrong one himself so she wouldn't be alone in her mistake. When she began to be tutored by a teacher, when she came across verses or dances she just couldn't grasp, it was to Juan she went, as he easily explained this or that word, or went through the steps of the dance with her with patience she didn't think even _he_ knew he had.

She liked the way Juan wasn't afraid to prod her, taunt her, the banter came easy between them… Natural. He understood her, almost eerily so, when she felt displaced and alone, an outsider, and he accepted her completely, even with her oddities and strange phrases. With Juan, everything was relaxed, natural, a flow that swam the riverbend undisturbed. For once in her life, conversation wasn't something to fear but enjoy, banter wasn't derivative but friendly, _being_ was easy.

It was Cesare who made her feel alright that she wasn't, herself, alright. Not fully. She still had nightmares, dim images flashing in her mind of the battle of Hogwarts, the death that whispered in her ear when she tried to sleep, the screams that haunted her. He found her once, on the balcony, in the dead of night, staring out at the vine groves with hazy waxed eyes. He stayed up with her, not even questioning why she was there, silently sitting beside her, not filling the aching silence with noise that, in the light of such loss she had faced, would mean nothing. He didn't lie to her, he didn't say she would be fine, that all would be well soon. Cesare didn't lie. He was purely… There. When the green curtains of the library fluttered one afternoon, when the flare of green made her jump, hand going to her wand, heart beating a mile a minute, when the flash of another vile green flared in her eyes and all she could see was Cedric dropping and people screaming in the rubble of Hogwarts, it was Cesare who took the curtains down the very next day and burned them without Horatia ever having to explain why she was so jumpy for the rest of the day. When her hand trembled as she reached for her cup, it was Cesare who steadied it with a kind smile and an irrelevant question that brought her back to the present. It was to Cesare she went to when, after one particularly vicious nightmare, she was sure someone was hurt and Tom was here, on his way, readying to take another loved one. He led her to his room that night, sitting in a chair he had dragged to the side of the fireplace, next to her, reading a story about couple called Abelard and Heloise until Horatia could find she could breath easy again.

She liked the way Cesare didn't pretend, not in the slightest. She liked the way he didn't lie, even by omission. She liked the way he was totally, unabashedly himself. She liked the way, with Cesare, for once, it was okay to be scared or frightened and it wasn't something to be ashamed of. For once, she didn't have to hide her emotions, brick them up and lock them down, she didn't have to bottle herself for the betterment of others, she didn't have to wear a mask. Cesare saw and Cesare didn't turn away or leave.

Horatia had never had parents before, she could not remember Lily or James, neither had she had any siblings, and whatever Petunia, Dudley and Vernon had been, parental, familial or affectionate was not one of the names on their long list of sins, but this… This felt like what she had always dreamed parents would be like, what a real family felt like, back in her dank cupboard, just an orphan girl trying to fantasize herself to sleep-

The prick of a pin in her side startled Horatia out of her quickly darkening thoughts. On instinct, she hissed and went to bat the hand away, but Vannozza, who was standing beside the maid who had accidentally pricked her, swiftly caught her wrist. Horatia sent an apologetic smile, small and coy, to the flushed maid who, gradually, returned the gesture back hesitantly.

"Now, now, keep still Horatia. This wouldn't take so long if you didn't wiggle like a parading goose."

Standing on a little wooden pedestal in the middle of her private chambers, surrounded by murmuring servants carrying a foray of velvet and silk dresses, half-dressed in the exceedingly complicated layers of a gown Horatia could not even begin to fathom how it would fully assembled itself in the end, sleeves and bodice still laid upon her bed, she gave another purposeful wiggle as Vannozza began to shimmy a sleeve up and over her arm, tying the little ribbons off at the shoulder. This was the first time Horatia had been shuffled into a dress, rather than her shift and a robe, and if Horatia had any say in the matter, it would be the last. Vannozza took a step backward, eyed her with a critical eye before shaking her head, coming at her again to undo the seventh sleeve she had tried on.

"I _feel_ like a goose. Plucked, oiled, and stuffed. Is all this really necessary?"

They had been up since the crack of dawn, Vannozza in a whirlwind of red skirts rousing Horatia from a rather peaceful sleep, a rarity for Horatia, haggling her into a hot tub to be scrubbed, oiled, prodded and brushed like a prized pony by a band of twittering maids. Lucrezia had been taken away early, after Vannozza had found the two messing with the oils rather than bathing, and realising time was not on their side, had sent Lucrezia to her own rooms to dress. Still, even without Lucrezia to distract her, three hours later, this hell felt like it would never end. And through it all, she still felt as if she was floating. Horatia's complaints fell on deaf ears as Vannozza waved down another haggard maid.

"No, this will not do. Bring me the emerald- No, the midnight blue French lace. Yes, it will bring her eyes. And the pearls… Yes, pearls will accentuate her skin."

Horatia huffed and craned her neck back to stare bottomlessly at the high arched ceiling. However, even here, being primped and primed like pretty cattle, Horatia felt… Light. Airy. Full of bubbles. It was an odd feeling, bizarre, one she hadn't often had and could never name. And even as she sniped, there was no bite there, no fire or true anger, it was just words.

"If I don't get off this pedestal in the next twenty minutes, the only thing that will be _accentuated_ is my ire."

From the corner of her eye she could see Vannozza supressing an indulgent smile, at this point entirely used to Horatia's acidic wit the young girl often, too often in her opinion, fell back on. Vannozza blamed her Spanish blood, her Catalan passions. Horatia blamed being shoved awake at an ungodly hour to be tangled in lace and silk. She supposed they would have to agree to disagree.

"We will be entering the gates of Rome today, and if ensuring my daughters look like the jewels they are is _all_ I can do, then that is what I _will_ do. Now, please Horatia, keep still."

Finally, Horatia realised why she felt like she was floating, drifting. She was _happy._ But that couldn't be. Not for long. Horatia Potter never got to be happy. Something would go wrong, horribly wrong, and someone would be hurt or killed and all this happiness she was feeling would be sucked away. Perhaps she didn't deserve to be happy. Fred, Sirius, Remus, Dobby, they would never get the chance to be happy again. They were gone and, in a way, when she laughed or smiled, she felt like some part of her was betraying them. Guilt would sink in, gnaw at her bones, nibble at her spinal cord. What right did she have to be here, grinning and giggling, when they could not be? But, then again, she wasn't a Potter anymore, was she? No. She was a Borgia and perhaps, just maybe, _Horatia Borgia_ could have the chance Horatia Potter never had. The opportunity to be happy and stay happy. Was that so selfish of her? She didn't think so. She hoped not.

"You're still missing something… But what?"

Vannozza mumbled as she circled Horatia after finally lacing up the bodice to her dress. The older woman crossed her arms over her own chest, idly fingering the necklace around her throat before something sparked in her dark eyes. Quickly, Vannozza reached up and unclasped the necklace, rushing forward to place the warmed silver against Horatia's own breasts, a maid holding back the curtain of her hair to allow Vannozza to clasp the necklace around the back of her neck. When she was done, she pulled back and then… Then her eyes got misty and Horatia's stomach dropped. Wearily, Horatia chuckled.

"I'm not that ugly, am I?"

A tear dropped down her cheek, cresting on her chin, as Vannozza staggered forward, gently arresting Horatia by the shoulders, leading her down the pedestal and over the room, towards the large polished mirror in the corner. It took Horatia embarrassingly long to realise the woman standing next to her mother was, in fact, herself.

There were no dark circles underneath her eyes. Her cheeks were no longer drawn and sallow. She was no longer painstakingly thin, though she was still on the slight side of things. She probably always would be. Nonetheless, the young woman staring back at her from the crisp reflection was simultainoulsy, irrevocably her, and yet everything she had never thought she could be. Things she didn't think she would _live_ long enough to be. That was her onyx hair, but it had been tamed into ringlets, corkscrew rushes that were delicately pinned from her face, held back by a pearled hairnet. That was her cattish face, always a bit too sharp, too keen, but the natural flush to her cheeks and lips from finally being in good health, the high arch of her brows opened her features up, her green eyes sparkling like emeralds, making her resemble more a marble statue than a pissed alley cat. The silk and velvet jewel blue gown made her seem graceful, taller than she truly was with the high waist line, the colour highlighting her pale skin from ashen to alabaster. The necklace, a simple chain of silver ending in a large pearl that rolled across her collarbone, pulled it altogether into a visage of blossoming womanhood rather than a scraggly teenager playing dress-up, which Horatia was used to resembling.

"You look beautiful!"

A new voice piped up from Horatia's bedchambers. Horatia swivelled to see the new-comer, settling at the lovely, grinning face that greeted her. Lucrezia Borgia had taken as much time as she to ready herself, and oddly enough, the two, like this villa, Horatia's reflection, contrarily resembled each other and yet couldn't be further separated. Day and night really. Lucrezia was decorated in a soft pink gown, embroidered with gold, in conjunction to Horatia's blue and silver. Her jewels too, spotted on her hairnet and slinking around her thin throat, were drops of crimson rubies against Horatia's snow pearls. Still, their features themselves, their matching height and curls, bathed them in similarity not easily overlooked. Peculiarly, Horatia thought, standing next to one another, they would look alarmingly alike Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff in their own cusps of youth.

"My Spanish pearl and Italian rose. How precious you both are."

Vannozza crooned as she pulled Lucrezia to them, first kissing Horatia's forehead and then Lucrezia's. Something cosy and fizzy tickled Horatia's stomach at such a calm, soft piece of affection being freely placed upon her. So rare. The easy kisses, the gentle words, the kind gestures. New. So new and… Well, she was used to nicknames. Girl-Who-Lived. Freak. Undesirable number one. However, she wasn't used to such… Nice ones. They made her squirm in an extraordinarily pleasant way.

"Why don't you two head to the palazzo and I'll meet you at the carriage with Joffre?"

Lucrezia, the ever bubble of exuberant energy she was, snatched up Horatia's arm at their mothers question and began dashing over the chamber, forcing Horatia to jog to keep up, chuckling as they went.

"Come, there are strawberry tarts in the carriage! I saw the cook take a platter in this morn."

Horatia laughed. Wholly laughed. The kind that was slightly obnoxious, teeth bared, sides crunching, but it felt good. Too good.

"Oh, you should have said that in the beginning!"

Vannozza laughed as heartily as Horatia had as she shouted at their backs.

"Do not ruin your dresses girls! Girls?! Virgin mother have mercy."

* * *

 **NEXT CHAPTER:** We finally enter Rome.

I know nothing much happened this chapter, but I really wanted to touch base with Horatia, check in on her emotional state, before we hit Rome and really begin to move into the plot of things. Think of the last five chapters as an extended prologue and what's coming next as Act 1. I also wanted a chapter, apart from the bit in the beginning, where we focus on the lovely ladies of this fic, rather than the male counterparts.

I also wanted to keep the first part of this chapter purposefully ambiguous, hence why I have left no names in it hinting at who's P.O.V it is, except we all know it's either Juan's or Cesare's. Don't worry, we'll be working back to this moment, and hints to exactly who it is will be dropped in (Likely copiously), but I wanted to keep a bit of mystery there before we get to it.

As always, **Who's P.O.V do you wish to see next? I'm also accepting prompts for this fic,** to keep the inspiration and muses going, and to also test my writing a little, so if you wish to see anything, perhaps Cesare juggling (joke), or a heart to heart between Lucrezia and Horatia, or simply want to give me a lyric, song, word, even a number, that I can incorporate into the next chapter, I would be ever so grateful. Just drop a review or a P.M and I'll accredit all prompts given in the Authors Note of the following chapters.

THANK YOU ALL for the lovely follows, favourites and reviews, they all made me smile and keep me coming back to this fic. If you have a moment, please drop a review and hopefully, the next chapter will be out soon!


	6. Chapter 6

**Rome, Borgia Apartments; 1492.**

 **Horatia's P.O.V**

This was Rome. A place where rambling stretches of rural stains still washed the shores of the city walls, the church at the very centre like the large bobbled head of a sunflower. In curves and bands, beasts still outstripped the residents. Goats, sheep and swine foraging in the relics of the Roman empire, bleating between decapitated marble statues of Venus and Ares, shitting on the steps of history. This Rome was a gulf of poverty and struggle, where the rift between the rich and poor pulled many a man apart. A city of orphans and vagabonds, saints and sinners, choruses and mutes. This Rome was the cradle of poison, blood feuds and vendettas.

Yet, Horatia's Rome, one of magnificent beauty, innovation, and art, where geniuses such as Da Vinci, Raphael, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo, sprouted from this vile bed of weeds, where they first picked up their brush, chisel or quill, lay slumbering right below the surface. There was a hope that skittered through the dirt streets, a sniff of fresh potential, regeneration, thawing the air about them. The dawn of a new age was breaking on the horizon.

It was strange, so very strange, to be in this alien place, a Rome lost to antiquity, and yet still see in the smooth stone, the rope of scaffolding, the murmuring of crowds, the Rome that was to come lurching just out of sight. It felt as if Horatia Borgia was standing on the head of a pin, the precipice where future crashed with past into one dizzying point of time.

Or maybe Horatia was confusing Rome with that baffling being known as self.

Horatia Borgia and Horatia Potter in one body. New Rome sleeping under old Rome. Over the last few days, despite never being one for prose, she had begun to write things out in a slight, leather bound book. Thoughts, random, sporadic. Memories, good and bad. Anything and everything that needed to get out the crushed space of her mind.

The lyrics of Hey Jude by the Beatles. _Hey Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better._

A sprawling passage about a Weasley Sunday lunch. _Molly's exasperated smile as the twins stole off with the glazed pork. Ron stuffing his face until his cheeks bulged. Hermione with a scroll in her hands, grinning over the parchment. Arthur with a rubber duck held aloft, turning it this way and that, fascinated by the squeak. The pleasant sound of laughter._

The smell of Petunia's perfume. _Sweet pea, rose and something sleek and slick, like jade._

A sketch, drawing had been one of the few talents Horatia could say she genuinely had, of Hogwarts standing proud on the rolling hills of Scotland. _A fat, pregnant moon. The black lake glittering underneath a blanket of stars. Turrets and towers proud and imposing. Fire-light flickering from narrow windows. The dip of a valley winding._

Names, dates, muddled and swirling into the middle of the page like a whirlpool of frantic thought. _Martin Luther? War of the Roses? The Hundred Years War? Has the printing press been invented yet? Guns? Are Guns a threat yet? Protestant Reformation? Where are you Horatia? Where are you? Fuck sake, where are you in time? What's coming? What's gone? Where. Are. You._

Horatia had never paid much attention in history class. She had saw no point. What use was history for those battling for a future? Now she was sinking in that irony. She was suffocating in many things, in truth. She missed music, and modern underwear, and T.V, and chocolate and peppermint. She missed coffee shops and trains, and being able to find out what the weather would be by a simple change of the channel…

"Ow! Shit! Fuck!"

The quill in Horatia's hand slipped, vaulting off the page, stabbing her other hand. She winced, wrenched the quill back, sniffing at the bleeding scratch darting across knuckle, glanced down to the book in her lap, her little book of madness, and stared down hard at the face that, seemingly, had miraculously appeared from nothing.

Cesare gazed back from the sheen of wet ink.

A drop of blood seeped from the tip of her quill.

It caught on his smiling lips, rinsing them red.

Horatia swiftly slammed her book shut and doggedly threw it away from her on the little patch of grass she was sitting on. It ricocheted off the pillar of the palazzo of the Borgia apartments and, as luck would have it, very nearly rebounded off the head of the man who came strolling around the corner. The very same man that had graced the pages of her little book more often than not lately. Cesare. Adorned in his violet and black clerical dress and velvet hat, Cesare sidestepped just in time to miss the bouncing book that would have clobbered the hat right off his head.

"I dearly hope that was not directed at me, little sister? I would hate to see what you would do to someone who merited such hostility."

He questioned with a pop to his highbrow, grinning. Smirking Cesare, snickering Lucrezia and sauntering Juan. Those was her siblings. The hiss of a nest of vipers. And where did Horatia fit? On this morning, soaked in the hot Italian sun, in one of the most beautiful gardens she had ever seen, Horatia thought she might be feeling a little bit surly.

"And if it was?"

Cesare leant a broad shoulder against the pillar, the ruffle in his skirts telling Horatia he had carelessly kicked one leg over the other as he regarded her with that keen smile. There was no bite to her voice, no malice or anger, not below her own dimpled grin.

"Then I would beg forgiveness for sins I could not name, on knee if it pleased your highness."

She pretended to contemplate it for a moment, just a flash of time, a roll of a cloud, with a little hum that bobbed in her throat, letting the heat of the morning lap about them languidly. Then she dramatically shoved her nose high into the air, drawing forth her best impression of Draco Malfoy.

"I suppose, seen as you _are_ my dear brother, a simple bow would suffice. But, please, do not hold out on the begging."

Cesare's head sank back as he laughed. Rich. Rough. A sound that came from the very core of his chest. It made something, something Horatia could not name, spark deep-rooted within her own, a candle blinking in a cavern. Warm. Sizzling. Blazing. She liked hearing and seeing Cesare laugh. She, woefully, didn't think he got to very often.

"I thought you would be with your tutor?"

He questioned as he kicked away from the wall, in the silence of his dying laughter. Horatia shook her head.

"No. Master Giuliano doesn't like teaching me and Lucrezia together. He says we're _unruly_. Lucrezia has mornings, I have evenings now."

Cesare snorted, holding back another laugh. For a strange moment, for this day seemed to be filled with oddity, Horatia almost felt robbed. Thieved. As if Cesare's laughter wasn't really his own, but hers, and he had no right to hold it back from her. It was a greedy thought, a dragon hoarding the gold it could not and would not spend, only nap upon. Avaricious and bizarre. Horatia couldn't make sense of it, not really, almost like it was some other persons thought and feeling creeping itself inside her. She ardently elbowed that thought away, blaming the sleepless night of writing in that damned book for the peculiarity her mind was becoming.

"Unruly? Never. Not my sisters who, only two morns passed, cut up and set fire to our mother's favourite tapestry."

Now it was Horatia's turn to snort.

"That was not my fault. Lucrezia's the one who knocked the candle over."

The cross of arms over chest, another cocked brow, another smile ghosting lips, had Horatia's gaze fleeing from Cesare to the blue sky hanging above them.

"And who is the one who swore they could throw a kitchen knife and pierce the apple across the room while blindfolded?"

Horatia shrugged her thin shoulders, her renowned Gryffindor pride barging to the forefront.

"Given, my aim was a little off, I only got the orange before I nearly, and I can't stress that word enough, skewered Master Giuliano. But if Lucrezia didn't wobble the chair as I climbed, I'm still sure I would have hit the target and-"

Cesare was chuckling, and there it was again, that heat to her chest, that confusing burn. It wasn't painful, per say. Not like the many other burns Horatia had endured in her harrowing life. It felt… _good_. A good type of pain. Now, wasn't that a paradox? How could pain feel good? Yet, it does, and there is no answer, not one Horatia can find. She'd rode a dragon, defeated the darkest wizard of her time, slain a basilisk and fallen through time, and yet… Yet she couldn't even name her own fucking emotions? She thought, perhaps, there might be a sick joke hidden in all that.

Still, she did see something. A bruise, lilac, underneath Cesare's eyes. A type of gloom of insomnia that only fellow victims can spot in the other.

"You look tired, Cesare."

Now it was Cesare's time to shrug, and Horatia thought a mirror, unseen, might be dividing them across the palazzo. She acted, then he copied, he performed, then she duplicated. Ebbing and flowing. Did he feel the good pain too? Could he, unlike her, name it? It was important to name things, Horatia thought. If you could name it, you knew what it was, you knew what you were fighting, and if you knew what you were fighting, you could win. You couldn't prevail against something unfamiliar. And, here, in the crux of the good pain, there was just enough unease and discomfort to alert Horatia to the fact that, maybe, just maybe, this 'good pain', no matter how good it felt, perhaps shouldn't be _felt_ at all.

Not with Cesare.

"That is because I am tired. Building father's path to the papal throne is exhausting work."

She opened her mouth to say something, words lost as Cesare bent down, plucked up her book and shook the pages out, wiping the dust on the back of his skirts, and just as he began to open her book to take a peek, Horatia was in movement. Scrambling up, she tried to dash for him, her skirts twisted about her legs, nearly made her tumble, nearly fall, but she was a nimble thing, even in the, what felt like, sixty layers of crushed velvet and satin, and got to him just as he began reciting a wrinkled page.

"Malfoy. Longbottom. Weasley. Abbot. Lockwood. Harding. Krum. Brodeur. Schneider. Orsini… Orsini?"

In a huff and a puff and a flurry of silk lines, Horatia made it to her brother and promptly snatched the book from his hands. He let it go easily enough, his attention now exclusively fixed on her. She shuffled underneath the dense and tight gaze. Horatia had never seen eyes like Cesare's before.

They were dark, you see. Not black, or blue, or brown, or green. Just… Dark. Shifting, swelling darkness. There was a beauty to be found in that dusk, Horatia would admit. A splendour only night knew intimately. Where light reflected in a burst of tiny stars. It shouldn't be possible. It shouldn't be right. To have such dark eyes with so much light in them. She shoved that thought away too. She was getting good at that now. Too good. Instead she thumbed the spine of her book and chewed on her lip.

"Old families that were active-… Here, alive, now. Families that have wi-… People like me in them."

Cesare's smile fell like glass on stone dropped from a great height, and with it, it took that flame in her chest. She should be glad it was gone. _She wasn't._ When had Horatia done anything she _should_ have? Not before. Not today. Perhaps never.

"And Orsini? You are confident they belong on this page?"

Horatia frowned as she saw severity chase away his smile to somewhere far away. To where even she couldn't reach. Anew, she was a dragon, looking for gold, snuffling for bullion. She chose her words meticulously, searching for ways he would understand.

"Yes. I-… Paolo Orsini created-… He will create skele-grow-… He becomes a highly regarded healer to people like me. Giovanni Battista Orsini creates a rather nasty flaying hex. It isn't pleasant. There are likely others lost to… Ones I can't remember. Cesare… What's wrong?"

She watched as a muscle contorted in his jaw, a jump of tendon shrinking stiff, like he was gnawing gristle off a bone.

"Have you notified father of this?"

His hand came up to her bicep, his fingers encircled, and though the grip was not tight, not at all, she felt the significance concealed between the gloved digits. Horatia shook her head, a rather tenacious curl tumbled free from her emerald hairnet, and, without thought or trigger, Cesare was pushing it back behind her ear tenderly.

"No. Not yet. I was trying to remember more when I lost concentration and-"

 _And I accidentally began drawing you without thinking._ Yet, she didn't say that. She suddenly found she couldn't, even if she wanted to. It got wedged in her throat, lodged itself a bumpy home, embedded, and refused to move. She didn't know why. A drawing was just a drawing, was it not? Like words were just words, and songs were just songs, and everything was nothing without context or meaning. What was the importance of her drawing, then, to justify such hesitation?

Horatia didn't know, and it pissed her right off. It seemed backwards here. A river running uphill. The longer she stayed, the more perplexed by everything she got, particularly Juan and Cesare, and surely, certainly, it should be opposite? Familiarity was the antithesis of confusion, wasn't it? The more familiar something was, the more you were around it, knew it, knew its ticks like Horatia knew the certain downward twist of Cesare's mouth that hinted at anger, or the specific crease Juan got around his eye when he was feeling upset or hurt, was meant to get rid of puzzlement. Knowledge was _meant_ to vanquish confusion, in a world where rivers ran down and not up.

So why, in all the fucking holy books in the world, did the more she grew to know her brothers, the more they fucking confused the shit out of her?

She wasn't used to confusion, not of this sort. She wasn't used to feeling things she could not name and could not control. She wasn't used to tender touches, or starlight eyes, or easy words, or family and love and, shit, an actual home, to having food every single day, or a bed of her own, in her own room, or a father who kissed her forehead every morn before he left, or a mother who sang her to sleep, or a sister who was just as ready to get into mischief as she, or good pain, or-

"When I lost my temper, and my book took flight. Cesare, for the love of Merlin, tell me what is wrong."

When confused, or displaced and disjointed, people often found themselves clinging to things they _did_ know, like lifeboats adrift in the sea, and Horatia was no exception. She may not understand the heat in her chest that came and went when it pleased. She may not understand the glimmer in Cesare's eyes or why exactly it made her want to smile. She may not understand why, sometimes, she thought she missed how Juan smelled, or how she even remembered he smelled like summer berries and mulled wine and something cool and crisp, similar to snowfall in winter, when she couldn't even remember if the Spanish inquisition was around yet or not, but this…

The moment right before the axe fell, when some revelation came hurtling towards you that lead to the big fight, or life changing events, was something Horatia knew intimately. _You're a witch, Horatia. I solemnly swear that I am up to no good._ _To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure._ _It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more._

So, really, it was no great surprise what Cesare said next.

"There is a particular Cardinal, a Cardinal _Orsini_ , that will be in conclave with Father in the upcoming weeks when the present Pope passes from our world."

Cesare's hand fell from her arm as Horatia let out a long, whistling breath.

"Well, that's… Problematic."

And, she knew, by Morgana and Merlin Horatia knew, she should not, definitely not, feel a slither of happiness at this shock, yet, again, she did. This… This was something she knew. Something that made sense. She knew what to do when there was a potential opponent to be scouted out. She knew it better than she knew how to be a sister, or a daughter, or, Morgana forbid, a functioning member of 15th century society.

This was something she was good at.

Guilt crashed upon her instantly. She should not feel anything vaguely like joy at the prospect of her father, Rodrigo, being confined in small spaces with, possibly, someone like her. Especially when in competition for the papacy, magic would give Orsini the edge. An advantage her father, decidedly, sealed away from her, would not have. No locked door, high room or walled building would keep her father safe if he, this Cardinal, took to… Nefarious means of winning.

Abruptly, that slight slink of pleasure, at finally having something she understood so close, distorted and deformed itself into fear, like a rose thrown into a raging fire, _because_ she knew what came next. First came the revelation, then came the struggle, then came the loss. Someone always had to pay the pied piper, and more often than not, he liked to be rewarded in blood. Sirius, Lily, James, Dobby, Remus, Mad-eye Moody, Fred… When someone needed to live, another always had to fall. Now, standing with Cesare in an alcove of the Borgia apartments gardens, she thought she might have heard the pied pipers damned flute crooning in the air once more.

And would he stop there, this Orsini? Just at her father? What if he came for her mother? Lucrezia? Juan? Cesare? Fuck… Little Joffre? Would life be so cruel to snatch her family away so soon after she had only just got them back? _Yes. Yes it would. If anyone knows this, it is you, Horatia._ Suddenly she's angry. Suddenly she's incensed. Suddenly, she's impulsive. Suddenly, she's all so very full of sudden that it feels like she might erupt from her own skin like a too ripe grape.

 _The pied piper could fuck off._

There was one thing for it, she thought, since there was only one thing these things ever came down to. Umbridge, Bellatrix, Tom Riddle and Fenrir had taught her that. You struck first, you struck swift, and you struck hard before the other could do the very same to you. Horatia had to deal with this Orsini, if he was like her, and against her father, before the Pope died and her father would be locked in close proximity with him.

What exactly that _dealing with_ foretold, Horatia didn't know quite yet. However, she supposed, it decided on how far this Orsini wanted to take it.

She was jumping the gun. He could be muggle, for all she knew. An everyday man just trying to make his way in the world like the rest of them. Yet, there were Orsini wizards to come, her history books told her so, and they had to come from somewhere, didn't they? First, she needed the answer to that question, then she would… She would follow the path wherever it may lead. She wasn't going to let some Italian bastard take her family, Imperio or otherwise abuse them, without a fight.

She had four hundred years' worth of advancement in magic backing her. Clearly, that would count for something if a duel broke out? Nevertheless, regrettably, there could be spells and magics that four hundred years had stripped away from her, lost in time and forgotten from memory, that could be thrown right in her face too.

Standing on the head of a pin, indeed.

"Do you believe he could be like you?"

Horatia's fingers tapped against her book in a bout of seven, her mind scurrying for solutions.

"It depends on how old their magic is at the moment. If it's new, they'll only be a few of them. A random birth here or there of muggleborns-… Ones like me. If it's had time to spread throughout the family and they've become pureblood-…. Yes. Possibly. And if this Orsini is against father, if I've heard your worry correctly… Rodrigo should _not_ be in conclave with him."

Then Cesare was moving, prowling down the veranda to the inner halls of the Borgia apartments, the strips of cloth of the canopy above their heads blinking him in throbs of gold and shade, a rhythm that strangely matched her heartbeat.

"I need to see father."

Horatia jogged after him, needing to pull up her skirts so she did not trip. Her bare feet made no sound on the balmy tile.

"I'll come too and we can-"

"No. I'll speak to father. _Alone_."

No. He was not doing this. Reaching out, she snatched at his shoulder, caught a slip of shawl between her fingers, fingernails biting into gilded thread, yanked, and forced Cesare to a stop, to face her, eye to eye, dusk to green, fire to ignition.

"Alone? What do you mean _alone_? Cesare, You _don't_ understand what you or father will be walking into if Orsini is like me. If I visit him first and-"

He wrestled his shoulder free, and the loss of contact almost stung. If it weren't for the rapid ire licking in her veins from Cesare's resolute scowl. It was the first time she had ever seen him angry. It only fed into her own, and hers back into his. A loop. A tide. Receding and gushing.

"No, you don't understand how dangerous this city is yet, Horatia. Rome is no Eden, and the Roman families are no angels. It is too soon and It is too dangerous to venture out. If you can see him for what he is, he can see you for what _you_ are, and that is a risk I am not willing to take. You stay here. Father and I will-"

"Don't be ridiculous, Cesare. You have no idea what signs to look for. You wouldn't even know where to begin. If he is like me, I can catch his slip, for he _will_ slip, and then we will know and-"

He lurched forward, toward her. She met him step for step.

"I said no, Horatia!"

They were close now. So close their noses nearly brushed. So close they shared the same breath. Steam. Hot and hazy and heady like smoke. There was a hammering in her ear, a pounding of a drum, and she wasn't quite sure whether it was Cesare's heart or her own that was beating in the slip of space between them. That strange heat flared back to searing life underneath her ribs, simmering in the pit of her stomach. She told herself it was anger, frustration, because she didn't know what else it could possibly be.

"And I say yes! I told you once, Cesare, I am _not_ a child. I can look after myself."

"But you do not have to any longer! When will you realize you are no longer alone? When will you see we are here for you? _I_ am here for you?!"

There was a spur, an energy, teeming about them. A thousand nerves set aflame. Open and raw and weeping soul. Her anger was Cesare's. Cesare's laughter was hers. Their breath was one, and their hearts matched and, perhaps, like her drawing, that was the implication. It was both everything _and_ nothing and not either or.

"Why do you think I'm doing this! If this Orsini is like me, and he realizes what you and father are looking for, he will become aggressive and you won't be able to stop him. I can't have him hurting you or father because I decided to sit back and enjoy the sunshine! All I need to do is find him, and-"

"Why must you be so belligerent?!"

"Me?! You're the cantankerous one!"

" _I'm only trying to protect you! I don't need protection! Stop doing that! Stop it!"_

They both come to a panting halt as they mutually began to say the same things at the same time. It felt like that moment in the day, just before twilight dropped, that special instant where the moon and the sun both colonized the wide sky and plucked it taut. Where two spheres, two kingdoms, for only one glint, became single instead of dual.

"You can't keep me buried away forever, Cesare."

He laughed at her, actually laughed at her, full of teeth and mirth and husk.

"I can certainly try."

Her hands clenched at her side with the effort not to throw a fist, or do something, anything, her fingers felt itchy, flexing, as if they wanted to grab something, and the cool wood of her wand pressing into the soft skin of her forearm tingled with barely suppressed magic.

"You-… You-… You fucking donkey!"

She swore as she spun around, storming down the way they had come thundering up.

"Where are you going?! Horatia!"

She didn't look back.

"To find someone who actually listens to me!"

* * *

 **Who could Horatia possibly be running too?**

 **A.N:** So, long time no see! Sorry for that. I've been busy with uni work and inspiration for this fic sort of puttered out. Nevertheless, I'm back, and I really hope this chapter makes up for at least half the wait I made you guys go through. Hopefully, there won't be a long time before next update. As always, **if you have a prompt** , please send it in, it feeds the muses.

 **THANK YOU** for all the wonderful reviews. They really kept me trailing back to this fic and not just throwing in the towel when inspiration ran dry. Thank you for the follows and favourites too, and I really do hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and are looking forward to what is to come. If you have a spare moment, please drop a review, and I will see you guys soon!

 **NOTE:** This chapter had no beta reader, and I am dyslexic, so there might be a few spelling and grammar mistakes littered throughout. I tried by best to polish it up, but, well, I fear a few might have slipped in. Hopefully I will have another Beta-reader before next chapter.


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